Maxi Librati was a famous French fashion brand during 1968 “student revolution”. The brand was founded in 1963 by Maxi (Mordechai) LIBRATI – a French Jew, who survived in concentration camps of WWII. Arrested and deported, he always believed in his luck. Upon his return from the camps, he went into business. He became a prominent textile entrepreneur, and his generosity towards charitable causes is legendary. Maxi LIBRATI was born February 5, 1925, in Lyon. His father had come to Lyon from Morocco in 1914, where he met his future wife, also from Morocco. Maxi was the eldest of a family of thirteen brothers and sisters and he trained to be a blacksmith. The family received the “Prix Cognacq-Jay,” a grant which provided financial support annually to many large families. Maxi's experience in the camps began with his arrest in 1943, when he was imprisoned at Fort Montluc and later sent to the Drancy internment camp. In the meantime, thanks to a Mr. AMBLARD, his family was taken to a property in La Tour-du-Pin, and that saved their lives. 18 years old Maxi was fortunate enough to be among the 200 people spared from the convoy number 59, bound for Auschwitz (he was tattooed with the number 145922). Later the Nazis sent him to the Warsaw Ghetto, where he was saved thanks to the fact that as the eldest son of a large family, he knew how to wash, iron, sew, polish floors, and cook. In July 1944, the Russians advanced, and the surviving prisoners were transported first to Dachau in Germany, then through Kovno, Lithuania, to Allach, where they were liberated by the Americans. On May 22, 1945, Maxi returned to France. He weighed 29 kg. He was taken under the care by Madame KIMMEL, who lost her son in those camps and became Maxi's "godmother". In 1948, he stayed in Paris, living at Mme KIMMEL’s home and working with her family in a wholesale shop on the corner of Rue Réaumur selling textiles. At that time LIBRATI learned the fashion design in one of the ORT Jewish schools in Paris. Ten years later, on February 5, 1963 (his birthday) Maxi opened his first shop in the Sentier District in Paris, on Aboukir Street. His brothers and sisters came to work with him. In 1967, his fashionable boutique, aptly named “La Gaminerie,” captured the spirit of Paris of the 1960s in the famous Saint-Germain-des-Prés. In 1967, which prefigured the 1968 “student revolution” in Paris, a fashion designer Paco RABANNE asked LIBRATI to display some of his creations in this shop windows. Later on, a man happened to spot a very chic and unusual mink coat designed by Paco RABANNE and offered to provide the two fashion designers, LIBRATI and RABANNE, with a budget to organize a fashion show in Dallas, Texas, in one of his shops. That man was Stanley MARCUS, chairman of the board of the luxury retailer Neiman Marcus in Dallas. Thus LIBRATI’s trademark became internationally known and often equated with French fashion taste. In 1955, Maxi got married and then had two children. But he did not forget the Holocaust, and in the secont part of his life he became one of the major donors to the Yad Vashem Museum in Israel. The elegant Parisian fashion designer Maxi LIBRATI passed away at the age of 94 in 2019, becoming an example of courage and optimism for many WWII survivors for many years to come.