Benjamin Segoura. Collection

Benjamin Segoura was born in Smyrna, the Ottoman Empire, in December 1879 as the son of Moreno Segoura and Djamila Hazan. Benjamin became a restaurateur of oriental carpets and emigrated to Belgium. On 8 July 1903 he married Djoya Benaderek in Brussels. Djoya had been born in Smyrna, Ottoman Empire, in April 1880 as the daughter of Abraham Benaderek and Mazaltob Benbenisté. Benjamin and Djoya changed addresses within Brussels often and two of their children were born in the Belgian capital: Victorine Hélène on 3 July 1904 and Vital Aron on 24 April 1906. During the First World War the family fled to France where on 27 August 1918 youngest child Mathilde Fortunée Segoura was born. After the First World War the family returned to Brussels, only to settle permanently in Paris, France, where they still resided on 10 May 1940 when Nazi-Germany invaded Belgium, France and the Netherlands. On 3 February 1943 Benjamin Segoura was arrested in the street in Paris. The following day he was transferred to the Drancy transit camp from where he wrote a final letter to his wife and children. Benjamin Segoura was killed after deportation from France to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Transport 47 on 11 February 1943. Djoya Benaderek and their children survived the war. In 1954, the French Ministry for former resistance fighters and war victims accorded a Political Deportee Card to Djoya on Benjamin’s name. Djoya Benaderek passed away in Paris on 18 April 1974.

Roger Devidas, grandson of Benjamin Segoura and Djoya Benaderek, donated this collection to the Memorial de la Shoah in Paris, France, in 2018. The Memorial de la Shoah kindly provided Kazerne Dossin with a digital copy of the collection later that year.

Memorial de la Shoah, France, 2018