Museum Acquires its First Collection from a Holocaust Survivor of Persian Descent

WASHINGTON – The family of a Jewish Iranian Holocaust survivor donated his detailed diary of survival from incarceration camps in Vichy France to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum today. The diary of Menashe Ezrapour is a rare addition to the Museum – the first and only artifact so far in its collection of more than 27,000 objects that is associated with a Holocaust survivor of Persian descent. 

“My father’s diary is more than his words on a page—it is a testament to resilience, a voice that refuses to be silenced, and a bridge between the past and the future,” says Caroline Yona, of Los Angeles, who donated her father’s diary to the Museum on April 2. “By donating it to the Museum, I honor his story and ensure that his voice will echo through history so that generations to come will remember, learn and never forget.”

“The importance of this diary to the Museum’s collection and to the historical record is extraordinary,” said Tad Stahnke, the William and Sheila Konar director of international education outreach for the Museum. “Ezrapour’s writing will begin to fill in the gaps about an underrepresented group of Holocaust victims and survivors.”

Since 2020, the Museum’s Sardari Project with IranWire.com has engaged young Iranians about the history and the relevance of the Holocaust to them. Stahnke says, “Ezrapour’s diary provides a direct link to Iran, the Second World War and the Holocaust through a primary source for an audience the Museum has worked to reach for several years – young people living in Iran – who have been exposed to the regime’s incessant Holocaust denial and censorship of accurate information about the Holocaust for as long as they have been alive.”

As the survivor generation diminishes in number, the Museum is in a race against time to rescue the evidence of the Holocaust. The Museum’s collection of the Holocaust documents the fate of Holocaust victims, survivors, rescuers, liberators, and others through artifacts, documents, photos, films, books, personal stories, and more.

With the window of opportunity in collecting these fragile materials closing, the Museum has intensified its efforts, actively collecting in 50 countries on six continents, in order to build the authoritative collection of records on the Holocaust and making it fully accessible and preserved for future education, research, and scholarship. To date, the Museum holds about 300 diaries in its collection.

“The history of Iran and the Holocaust has been an underrepresented subject in our collection,” says James Gilmore, a collections curator for the Museum. “So, we are thrilled to have Menashe Ezrapour’s diary join our collection so that researchers can better understand this piece of Holocaust history and its continuing relevance in Iran and worldwide.”

Born to a Jewish family in Hamadan, Iran, Ezrapour relocated to Grenoble, France, in 1938 to study engineering. His diary detailed his experiences as a student, and eventually, his four years of survival in three different incarceration camps in Vichy France. 

In 2016, Yona told IranWire that at 23, Ezrapour was held for 45 days in a French prison for failure to report his Jewish identity. The student was imprisoned at the Chapoly labor camp, the Gurs internment camp, and the Meyreuil labor camp, all in southern France. Two months after D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II, Ezrapour and the Meyreuil labor camp were liberated by American forces. After his liberation in August 1944, Ezrapour returned to Grenoble to complete his engineering degree before returning to his birthplace of Hamadan later that year. 

According to Yona, Iran became increasingly inhospitable to Jewish life. Because of this, Ezrapour and his wife moved to the United States in 1986, joining Yona in Los Angeles.

The palm-sized diary is written in French and contains about 365 pages – a year’s worth of entries.