Georges Charpak was born in Dąbrowica, Poland (now: Ukraine) in 1924. His family falsified the documents and escaped from the Nazi system to Vichy France in the 1930s. All of them refused to display the yellow star. Georges has also joined the resistance, he was arrested, and sent to Dachau in 1944.
Fellow prisoners from Dachau who were unfortunately not lucky enough to work at CERN later.
From Dachau, he was sent to CERN in 1959, as a student of Frédéric Joliot-Curie, invented the multiwire proportional chamber, a part of the particle detectors, and was given the physics Nobel prize in 1992. Not bad outcome for a Dachau survivor. Throughout the life, he remained a staunch advocate of nuclear energy.
He died yesterday at age of 86: Heuer's CERN, Monsters and Critics, Sydney Morning Herald.
