Eva Szepesi

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Eva Szepesi (* 29. September 1932 in Budapest as Eva Diamond ) is a Holocaust survivors who reported as a contemporary witness in lectures and books about their fate. She was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for her commitment .

Life

Szepesi grew up in Budapest, where her parents ran a men's fashion shop. From April 5, 1944, her family had to wear the Jewish star. The father was sent to the labor service in Belarus . At the age of eleven, Eva Szepesi fled with her aunt through a forest to Slovakia ; They were on foot for eleven hours. Her mother Valery Diamant and her younger brother Tamás would follow later. Eva Szepesi played deaf and mute so as not to attract attention. However, the National Socialists discovered the hiding place and initially took the girl to a collection camp in Sereď .

On the last transport, Szepesi was taken from there in a cattle wagon to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where she arrived on November 2, 1944. She found the loss of a blue cardigan and its braids particularly painful when registering. A Slovak guard gave her the tip to pretend to be 16-year-old. This saved Szepesi from the immediate murder in the gas chamber , because all the younger prisoners were considered unfit for work. She received the prisoner number A26877. At the end of January 1945 she was not taken on the death march because she was already believed dead. When the camp was liberated on January 27, 1945, she was rescued by a Russian soldier after waiting in the cold between corpses for more than a week without eating or drinking. This makes her one of the only 400 people who survived imprisonment in concentration camps as children, the so-called "child survivors".

After an initial period in the hospital, Szepesi returned to Budapest, where her uncle found her in a children's home. She lived with her uncle and aunt, got her school leaving certificate and trained as a tailor . In 1951 she married Andor Szepesi. Since her husband, a trained furrier , got a job in the Hungarian commercial agency, the couple moved to Frankfurt am Main in 1954 . Andor Szepesi died in 1993.

Eva Szepesi did not talk about her experiences in Auschwitz for fifty years. On the occasion of the release of Steven Spielberg's feature film Schindler's List , she was invited to an interview with the Shoah Foundation in 1995 . Her daughters Judith and Anita persuaded her to travel to Auschwitz for a memorial service to mark the 50th anniversary of the liberation. There she spoke to young people from the Jewish community for the first time about her time in the concentration camp.

The first conversation in Auschwitz inspired Szepesi to become involved as a contemporary witness from now on. She attended a language course to improve her German. A teacher became aware of her identification with the prisoner number. Since then, Szepesi has been speaking about her life story at schools and other public institutions. She also accompanies school classes when they visit memorial sites. In 2011 she published her autobiography A Girl on the Run alone .

On the basis of a list of names, on another visit to Auschwitz in 2016, she also learned with certainty that her mother and brother had been murdered before their arrival. She met the author and presenter Bärbel Schäfer at an Auschwitz congress at the Frankfurt Schauspielhaus . The two women met several times and talked about Szepesi's life. This resulted in the book My afternoons with Eva - About life after Auschwitz , published in 2017 .

In April 2017 Szepesi received the plaque of honor from the city of Frankfurt am Main . In November of the same year she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for her work as a contemporary witness ; the Hessian minister Lucia Puttrich presented her with the award.

Works

  • Eva Szepesi (with the assistance of Babette Quinkert): A girl alone on the run. Hungary-Slovakia-Poland (1944–1945) , Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86331-005-9

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Eva Szepesi's fear never gives way. Frankfurter Neue Presse , February 5, 2016, accessed on January 25, 2018 .
  2. ↑ a b c Alone on the run from the Nazis. op-online.de , November 12, 2011, accessed on January 25, 2018 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j The child did not know that the train was going to Auschwitz. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 8, 2017, accessed on January 25, 2018 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i "They thought I was dead". Frankfurter Neue Presse , May 9, 2017, accessed on January 25, 2018 .
  5. ↑ a b c All alone. Jüdische Allgemeine , January 24, 2013, accessed January 25, 2018 .
  6. ↑ a b c d Interview with Eva Szepesi. Anne Frank Educational Center, accessed January 25, 2018 .
  7. ↑ a b c "Understanding How to Look Away". Jüdische Allgemeine , November 30, 2017, accessed January 25, 2018 .
  8. ↑ City honors contemporary witness. Frankfurter Rundschau , April 27, 2017, accessed on January 25, 2018 .
  9. ↑ A strong woman. Jüdische Allgemeine , November 2, 2017, accessed January 25, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Szepesi, Eva
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Diamant, Eva (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian Holocaust survivors
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest , Hungary