The Olympic flame arrived in Paris with torchbearers including Hyper Cacher attack hero Lassana Bathily, Holocaust survivor Léon Lewkowicz, and Jewish LGBTQ activist and podcaster Elise Goldfarb.
Lassana Bathily, a Muslim immigrant from Mali, led customers of Hyper Cacher to safety during the 2015 terrorist attack and coordinated with police. The city of Paris honoured him as a torchbearer for his heroic actions as an employee of the kosher store.
Léon Lewkowicz, an Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor and former French weightlifting champion, carried the flame through the 15th arrondissement to the Memorial Garden of the Children of the Vél’ d’hiv’. This memorial commemorates the 4,115 children deported from Paris and murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942. Lewkowicz, now 94, was deported at 15 and survived death marches, returning to France in 1945. He later became the French weightlifting champion at 19.
The flame also passed by the Drancy Holocaust Memorial. The city of Paris highlighted on social media that the Olympic values serve as a lever to combat racism and antisemitism and to build a cohesive society.
Elise Goldfarb, a Jewish LGBTQ radio host and media consultant, received the flame from Lewkowicz. Goldfarb, whose grandmother was hidden during the Holocaust, saw this as a symbolic bridge between generations. She expressed gratitude to her supporters and reflected on the challenges she faced following the October 7 massacre.
