“It is a huge honour,” he said of carrying the torch. “I bring peace.” 1 min Roger Lebranchu who survived almost two years in Nazi concentration camps and was the oldest person to carry the Olympic Torch in last year’s Paris Games relay has died aged 102, the French Rowing Federation announced. He was also […]
“It is a huge honour,” he said of carrying the torch. “I bring peace.”
1 min
Roger Lebranchu who survived almost two years in Nazi concentration camps and was the oldest person to carry the Olympic Torch in last year’s Paris Games relay has died aged 102, the French Rowing Federation announced.
“I did not want to go to Germany, I wanted to fight them,” he told Ouest France newspaper in September 2023.Issued on: Modified: He lit the cauldron during the torch relay as it passed through the famed monastery of Mont-Saint-Michel, in May, 2024.With his passing, Israel’s Shaul Ladany is believed to be the only remaining Olympic athlete alive to have survived a Second World War concentration camp.
‘See you later’
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RFI’s coverage of the Paris Olympics 2024Ladany, 88, was in Bergen-Belsen camp and also survived the terror attack on the Israeli team at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.
“I fought for France to be liberated and I fought for France in sport afterwards,” he told BFM TV last year.His father honoured the promise of ‘see you later’ by greeting him at a Paris metro station when he returned to France shortly afterwards.(with AFP)Along with several others, Lebranchu escaped from a ‘Death March’ in April 1945 and was picked up safely by the US Army.Lebranchu was arrested in 1943 as he tried to escape to North Africa and join General Charles de Gaulle’s Free French Army after refusing to go to Germany as a forced labourer.His journey lasted three days, he told Ouest France. Half the people in his wagon died and the rest slaked their thirst by “licking the bolts on the doors”.To display this content from X (Twitter), you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement.Lebranchu was a member of the French rowing eight who finished fourth in the 1948 London Games.
