Henri Raczymow, grandson of Polish Jewish immigrants, was born in Paris on April 15, 1948 and spent his childhood in the neighborhood of Belleville where Jewish immigrants predominated. Gallimard published his first book, The Saisie in 1973, which would continue twenty titles. In the eighties working with Aby translated several novels Wieviorka author of Yiddish literature (Sholem Asch, Mendele Mokher Sforim, Ozer Warshawski). In 2008 he received an award from the Foundation of Judaism in France in the category of Arts. In February 2009, Antoine Compagnon invited him to participate in his seminar at the Collège de France. In a voiceless scream, his best known and most novel, evokes the period of the Second World War.

Henri Raczymow is a major French novelists of today. It belongs to the "second generation" of writers of the Holocaust; those born after the Shoah and whose parents survived and transmitted them their experience. In a May 2002 interview Raczymow acknowledged that his biography is reflected in the characters and the stories of his novels: "All that I am and I write is based on my personal biographical situation."