In 1942, Lily Ebert was 18 years old and her world in Hungary had been slowly deteriorating and dismantled since Hitler’s amoral rise to power. For several years, the Nazis had been slowly demoralizing and destroying Jewish communities in Europe, removing all of their rights and ability to interact in the world, transporting them to “work camps”, and systematically eliminating them through starvation, torture and murder. His intent was the Final Solution, and the world was seemingly unified in its attempt to ignore that fact, because of antisemitism and because of the belief that it would cause more havoc, if the truth was revealed.
Even though at war with Germany, the world largely ignored this wanton genocide and did little to attempt to stop the transports of Jews to their ultimate deaths. Their homes were taken over, their belongings stolen, and they were attacked and humiliated with abandon. No one stopped the Nazis. Many were obsessed with their own hate, and agreed with them, and those that did not, were afraid of the repercussions. Still, there were some righteous people who fought back against the National Socialists, but 6 million would die before that fight was won.
In 1944, Lily and her family were all piled into a cattle car and taken to Auschwitz. It was the last time she saw her mother. Auschwitz is known for its crematoriums, where Jews were indiscriminately murdered and incinerated. The memoir, inspired by Lily’s 16-year-old great grandson, explains what happened to her from her early life until 2020, when she turned 97 during the Covid Pandemic and became ill. Fortunately, she did survive. Lily is grateful that her great grandson’s generation will keep her story and the history of The Holocaust alive, because that is the only way she believes it will be prevented from happening again. However, at the time of the publication of this book, that idea may be in question.
Lily had 10 grandchildren and 34 great grandchildren. She lived a full life and spent the latter part of it trying to keep the memory of those murdered alive and to keep the world aware of the genocide of the Jews during World War II. She lectured about it hoping to make sure it would never happen again. Currently, unfortunately, it is dangerously close to reoccurring with the Pro-Palestinian movement and the International Criminal Court showing their anti-Semitic agendas, hoping to eliminate the leaders of the Jewish State of Israel, or the Jews from the river to the sea. There has already been a brutal massacre of Jews in Israel that has largely been forgotten, and the perpetrators have been forgiven or excused. Hostages taken, if they are still alive, remain in captivity, being abused and tortured.
Although I have read many books on this subject, I learn new horrific details every time I read another. Learning that Nazis murdered babies in front of their mothers by smashing them into walls was merely something I had heard as a rumor before. Lily witnessed this. I have also heard of mothers who watched their infants burned at the stake. This was once told to me, by a survivor, a mother who had witnessed it. I was very young when I heard this, and I wasn’t sure if it had happened. Now I believe that it surely did.
Lily was one of the few lucky ones who survived. She protected the two sisters with her, and they were all eventually rescued. This is not true for most of the rest of her family. In the audio, the readers describe the abuse and brutality, but their voices are calm and so it is not as difficult to read as I had expected. It is sometimes more clinical than emotional, which takes some of the stress out of the subject matter. Still, the horror of that time is palpable, in the memoir, and the idea that there are people marching today, to destroy the Jews once again, is therefore, even more horrifying. Israel was attacked, during a ceasefire, by Hamas, and innocent people were murdered in their beds and worse. Yet the world is condemning Israel and the Jews for fighting back. No Arab country will take these Palestinians, yet the world is insisting that Israel absorb a culture bent on killing them. Read the book, draw your own conclusions after fully educating yourself with not only the history, but the current events. I think most readers will realize that the Jews and Israel are unfairly being targeted.