“A “Righteous” person leaves us”, Justine Decourselle, who ran 1,621 kilometers against the forgetting of the Shoah in the spring, has died

Justine Decourselle, who became the emblem of the “Race against oblivion”, died suddenly on October 15, 2026 following a cardiac arrest, according to her Instagram account “coursecontreloubli” in a post dated October 16. After feeling unwell, she was taken care of and placed in intensive care for several days before passing away. Last spring, she ran more than 1,600 kilometers to reach the Auschwitz camp in Poland.

The young woman lived in Pérols (Hérault) and was a nurse in an Ehpad (accommodation establishment for dependent elderly people). Elderly people shared their memories of the Second World War with him. Touched by these stories, she made it her mission to pass on these memories so that they do not sink into oblivion.

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“I run so as not to forget”

This decision took him towards an exceptional memorial feat in the spring of 2026. To inscribe his race in the memory of the deportation, Justine set off on April 13 from the Drancy internment camp in Seine-Saint-Denis. A symbolic date, that of the departure of convoy 71 in 1944, which transported 1,500 deportees, including Simone Veil and the children of Izieu. She covered 1,621 kilometers running for 33 days, the equivalent of a marathon per day, following the old railway tracks used by deportation convoys. She arrived at the gate of Auschwitz-Birkenau on May 15, 2026.

At each significant stage, the young athlete placed pebbles painted beforehand by students and citizens she met during her awareness-raising activities carried out in different towns along her route. Each pebble made it possible to materialize the memory and the passage of people deported across Europe. “I run so as not to forget,” the marathon runner wrote on her Instagram bio.

A fight against his illnesses

“A “Righteous” person leaves us. It is a huge shock to learn of the death of Justine Decourselle,” we can now read in a post from October 17 on her Instagram account “coursecontreloubli”. The mayor of Pérols, Jean-Pierre Rico, paid tribute to the young woman and shared his deep emotion by describing her death as an “absolute tragedy” to Midi Libre. The Paris Shoah Memorial, which supported and accompanied Justine in her project, described her as “committed and determined” and praised “the memory of an exceptional young woman” who had “marked them during her visit to the Memorial”, on its Instagram account.