Paul Sobol, one of the last survivors of Auschwitz, dies in Brussels

One of the last survivors of the Auschwitz extermination camp, Paul Sobol, died earlier this week in Brussels, his son announced on Wednesday.

"It is with great sadness that I inform you that my father joined his little Nelly last night,” Paul’s son Alain wrote. “He left without suffering, less than an hour after a ruptured aneurysm.”

A survivor of the extermination camp built by the Nazis in Poland during the Second World War, Sobol, a rare surviving witness from Belgium, participated in the work of remembrance by passing on his testimony to young people.

Paul Sobol was born in Paris in 1926. His family, who arrived in Brussels when he was two years old, were arrested and deported on 13 June 1944. His parents, Romain and Marie, as well as his brother David, both died while Paul and his sister Betsy survived.

Interned in Auschwitz, Paul was forced to take part in a death march to other camps because of the Allied advance. He took advantage of the bombardment of 25 April 1945, to escape during a train transfer and take refuge in a village among French prisoners who would later be released by the Americans on 1 May 1945.