The Olympic flame came to Paris on Sunday, carried by torchbearers that included Hyper Cacher attack hero Lassana Bathily, Holocaust survivor Léon Lewkowicz, and a Jewish LGBTQ activist and podcaster.
Bathily, a Muslim immigrant from Mali who led customers of Hyper Cacher to safety and coordinated with police during a 2015 terrorist attack, was chosen as one of the torchbearers according to the city of Paris.
As an employee of the kosher store, “he demonstrated heroic behavior during these tragic events,” the municipality said on social media on Sunday.
Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor and former French weightlifting champion Léon Lewkowicz carried the Olympic flame through the 15th arrondissement to the Memorial Garden of the Children of the Vél’ d’hiv’, which commemorates the 4,115 children deported from Paris and murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942.
The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) said in a Monday statement that the 94-year-old had been deported to the death camp at the age of 15 and survived death marches. He returned to France in 1945, reportedly weighing only 33 kilos, but became “the strongest man in France, and at the age of 19, French weightlifting champion.”
Flame passed Holocaust memorial
“75 years later, still a sports fan and die-hard Olympic Games fan, Léon dreamed of carrying the Olympic flame,” CRIF said on social media on Sunday. “Today he did it.”
The flame also passed by the Drancy Holocaust Memorial, according to the museum. The city of Paris said on its X account “that the values of the Olympics constitute a lever to fight against racism, antisemitism and build society.”
Lewkowicz passed the Olympic flame to Jewish LGBTQ radio host and media consultant Elise Goldfarb, according to her Instagram account. She thanked supporters for supporting the honor awarded her, mentioning the difficulties she had faced in the wake of the October 7 massacre. Goldfarb, according to CRIF, was the granddaughter of a child who was hidden during the Holocaust, and the passing of the flame between them presented a “bridge between eras.”