The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum acquired its first collection directly associated with a Persian Holocaust survivor in April, a diary written by the only known Iranian Jewish Shoah survivor.
Handwritten in French by Menashe Ezrapour, the palm-sized diary offers insight into nearly a year of the engineering student’s life before enduring four years in various incarceration camps. His diary joins 300 others in the museum, providing an antidote to the rampant Holocaust denial and censorship in his native Iran.
“The importance of this diary to the museum’s collection and to the historical record is extraordinary,” Tad Stahnke, USHMM’s director of international education outreach, said in a press release. “Ezrapour’s writing will begin to fill in the gaps about an underrepresented group of Holocaust victims and survivors.”
Ezrapour was born to a Jewish family in Hamadan, Iran. In 1938, he moved to Grenoble, France, to pursue engineering school. The diary entries describe the young man’s passion for dancing and a forbidden love: a Christian woman by the name of Betty.
Ezrapour’s diary reflected his unwavering faith: “Every day, at the end of the day, he always puts ‘thank God’ and how God is great,” his daughter, Caroline Yona, said. But soon after, Ezrapour would have to hide his religion.
The 21-year-old’s early entries don’t discuss World War II, but conditions in occupied France worsened by the end of the 365-page diary.
“Towards the end, things get bad,” Yona said. “[My father] talked about how hungry he is and how little there is to eat.”
At the age of 23, Ezrapour was held for 45 days in a French prison for failing to report his Jewish identity. He was imprisoned in four different labor or internment camps in Vichy France over the next four years, given only pieces of dry bread and watered-down turnip soup.
Ezrapour and the Meyreuil labor camp were freed by American troops two months after D-Day. In 1944, he returned to Grenoble to complete his engineering degree before moving back to Hamadan and marrying his wife. The two joined Yona in Los Angeles in 1986 when Iran became more unwelcoming to Jewish life.
Despite Ezrapour’s harrowing experience as a Jewish man during World War II, some Iranians refused to believe what had happened.
“Years ago, and even now, they’re denying the Holocaust,” Yona said.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed that the Holocaust was a “myth” in a 2005 speech to thousands of people, prompting widespread misinformation in Iran, she said.
“My father passed away 15 years ago and he was really hurt by that,” Yona said, adding that Ezrapour began doing TV interviews with the Persian news to “inform people that there was in fact a Holocaust and my father was a living example of that.”
Yona donated Ezrapour’s diary to the Museum on April 2.
Stahnke and fellow USHMM staff hope that displaying the diary will help viewers better understand the events of the Holocaust, especially through the lens of a Persian Holocaust survivor.
“As an artifact in the museum’s permanent collection, the diary intimately connects us to a family’s personal story and a lesser-known history of the Holocaust,” James Gilmore, USHMM’s oral history curator, said in a statement emailed to Washington Jewish Week.
The diary supplements the museum’s ongoing efforts to counteract Holocaust denial in Iran. In 2020, USHMM and IranWire.com launched “The Sardari Project: Iran and the Holocaust” to disseminate articles and videos about the Holocaust, including Iran’s role as a “haven for between five and six thousand Jews fleeing Nazi-occupied territories,” according to a USHMM press release.
Stahnke hopes to feature Ezrapour’s diary in USHMM’s educational outreach — translated to Persian — to bridge the gap between young Iranian citizens and the “censorship and restrictions that the government puts in place to keep [Holocaust-related] information from coming into the country,” he said in an interview.
“One reason I [donated my father’s diary to USHMM] is for young people to realize that survivors aren’t only European victims,” Yona said.
The decision wasn’t an easy one to make for Yona and her family. Yona said she has cherished her father’s writings since she was 5 or 6 years old — “I’m the one who always held on to this diary” — but the words recently began to fade and some pages started to tear.
The tiny book had prompted young Yona to ask Ezrapour questions about his wartime experience, which he had previously rarely discussed. In Yona’s eyes, her father was a hero who wanted to make the world a better place.
“Throughout all the problems that he had in his life, he was always a good person and wanted nothing but good for everyone in his life,” Yona said.
Ezrapour’s diary will be housed in one of USHMM’s collection vaults at its family collections, conservation and research center in Bowie, Maryland, accessible to researchers who visit. The diary will also eventually be available to the general public in digital format.
“I’m proud that my father can be remembered and his legacy continues,” Yona said.
