Déborah Lifszyc (1907–1942): Ethnologue et linguiste (de Gondär à Auschwitz)

Abstract

Déborah Lifszyc, a Polish Jewish born in Russia, French naturalized in 1937, was ethnologist and linguist, an one of those least known figures ignored of the 30’s in Ethiopian Studies. A member of the Dakar–Djibouti mission in 1932, she follows Marcel Griaule in a 1935 mission in Sudan. Michel Leiris’s friend, she worked with him on the zars and the interpretation of amulets. A founding member of the Musée de l’Homme in Trocadéro, she joins the French resistance in the network of the same name. Arrested by the French police in 1942, she was deported to Auschwitz where she died.