Denise Holstein

Denise Holstein (6 February 1927 – 16 November 2024) was a French Auschwitz concentration camp survivor and Holocaust witness, who was liberated on 15 April 1945. As a Holocaust witness, Holstein tells her story in two books and in a documentary made by a student from the Lycée Corneille in Rouen. For almost fifty years, Holstein never spoke about her life before writing about it. Her father, Bernard Holstein, was born in Kaunas in the Russian Empire (now Lithuania) on 20 August 1890 and was a dental surgeon. Bernard Holstein fought in two wars and was a reserve officer. In 1940, Denise's mother Juliette, joined her husband as an ambulance driver. It took place during the great roundup of all the Jews of Rouen and across the Seine-Inférieure department. She never saw them again. As an orphan, she benefited from the help of the Union générale des israélites de France (UGIF) and did not return to the Drancy camp. by British soldiers. That same year, she published her testimony for the first time, by the Paris-based publisher, Edition⁰1 under the title Je ne vous oublierai jamais, mes enfants d'Auschwitz (I will never forget you, my children of Auschwitz).

Holstein died on 16 November 2024, at the age of 97.