He designed Europe’s most iconic car. Now he’s recalibrating life in a different lane
Walking down Devorah Haneviah Street in Bnei Brak, you might run into Efraim (Francois) and Batia Wasservogel, who look like any other of the myriad retired couples living in the city. But Efraim Wasservogel’s humble demeanor as an 80-something late-stage kollel avreich belies a past that brought him to the peak of the European automobile industry and has continued to make him a sought-after consultant for giant companies all over the world. A mathematician and economist by profession, he was the creator of the Renault 5, a cult classic vehicle that was Europe’s best-selling car in the ’70s and ’80s and is still a market leader in 2025 — while he has since driven in another direction.
And he was also one of just a few babies out of thousands born in Auschwitz who actually survived until liberation.
In conversation, Dr. Wasservogel is self-effacing, playing down or joking about his front-seat role in science and industry. And while today he spends his mornings in the beis medrash, he was born into and grew up in a family that was utterly assimilated — which, providentially, was one reason in the natural order of things for his miraculous survival.
“The Nazis killed my father and my family before I was born,” he relates. “My mother, Myriam, from a cultured family, was a lawyer who had studied in a Polish university and spoke flawless Polish, with no trace of a Yiddish accent — she didn’t speak Yiddish. Since she was blonde, too, she was able to pass herself off as a Christian during the war.”
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