Haim Parsimento

Born on 15 August 1905 in Smyrna (now Izmir) in Turkey, Haim Parsimento moved to Paris and became a shoemaker. When the war broke out in 1939, he and his wife Sarah had three daughters: Violette aged 14, Jeanine aged 5 and Louise aged 3. Parsimento was arrested and sent to Drancy before being sent to Alderney on 11 October 1943, where he was housed in Norderney. Taking advantage of the chaos that ensued as the Allies advanced into German-held territory in mid-1944, Parsimento was able to escape. He was liberated in Samer in the Pas-de-Calais region of France on 2 September 1944. Although Parsimento survived the war, his entire family perished during the Holocaust: his wife Sarah and two of his daughters (Louise and Jeanine) in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and his eldest daughter Violette in Bergen-Belsen shortly after it was liberated by the British.

Sources

The Great Fire occurred on 13 September 1922, four days after Turkish forces regained control of the city, marking the end of the Greco-Turkish War. G. Milton. Paradise Lost: Smyrna, 1922: The Destruction of Islam’s City of Tolerance (New York: Basic Books, 2008).

CDJC, ‘Haim Parsimento’, http://ressources.memorialdelashoah.org  (accessed 16 April 2020).

Benoit Luc, pers. comm.

Luc, Les déportés de France vers Aurigny, Annex 7.