Henryk Francuz died last week in Tel Aviv. He was born in 1925 in Łódź, Poland, survived the concentration camps Auschwitz and Fürstengrube, as well as the death march to Schleswig-Holstein via the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. He is one of the few survivors of the bombing attack on the ships in the Bay of Lübeck on May 3, 1945, which resulted in the death of 6600 prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp.

In 1947 he returned to Poland where he met his wife Dorota. She had survived the concentration camps Auschwitz and Stutthof and was herself liberated near Lübeck in May 1945. Together they emigrated to Israel.

In 2012 Henryk Francuz returned to the Bay of Lübeck for the first time and took part in the commemorative ceremony on the occasion of the 67. anniversary of the catastrophe, where he gave a powerful speech. He has maintained close contact to the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial ever since. We will miss his warm and energetic personality, his curiosity and his sense of humor. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.