Eva was born in 1926 in Romania, but in the part of Romania that was given to Hungary. Her parents were Hungarian and so was Eva. School, specifically first grade, was difficult for Eva because she did not speak any Romanian she only spoke Hungarian. By second grade Eva could speak Romanian, and was very good at school. Eva was the youngest of 4 children in an ethnically Hungarian family.
 
When Eva was 3, the Great Depression took its toll on the family’s finances and they were forced to leave their home and move to a small apartment. Her sisters, then 17 and 12, as well as her brother, 14, all teased her that she was the cause the family’s misfortune. School was difficult for Eva there, the classes had between 30-40 students and boys and girls would sit on opposite sides of the classroom. Classmates would often poke Eva’s neck with ink pens. Students kept telling Eva to go to Palestine. Eva told her mother that she would not go back to school. The next day she went to her teacher about what as happening, as punishment for not telling him first Eva was sent home from school for 3 days.  

Romania was affected by the Great Depression of 1929, and like Germany, gave rise to its own right wing party, the Iron Guard. The Iron Guard was strongly influenced by Nazis Germany. The party was also anti-Semitic. The party was appointed to government in 1939. Her parents were very happy when in 1943 Hungary took back their part o Romania. Eva was in Junior High at this time, they did not know what was waiting for them.  

In 1944 the German S.S. came to Hungary. Immediately the S.S. told them to sew on yellow stars, so they could be identified as Jewish. They were also told that after 9pm they were not supposed to be out at all on the streets. In the town there was a neighborhood of very religious Jews. The German S.S. came in January and in March they emptied out the big synagogue in the neighborhood and took out all of the religious Jews living there.  

They were the first ones taken to Auschwitz. They took all of the Jews in the town, and took them by carriage to the ghetto. When they arrived at the ghetto there were small room with no furniture in them. Each corner of the room was given to a family. They took all of them men and older boys to work in the ghetto. There was only one kitchen in the room, and they would try to cook but there was very little food. The S.S. soldiers in the ghetto were very young, 15 was the oldest. This was because the older officers had to fight in the war, in Russia or Ukraine. The S.S. did not do much in the ghetto, and they gave over control of the ghetto to the Hungarians, who would come every week.  

Jews were allowed to take one suitcase each to the ghetto with them, and every week the Hungarians would search them, and take whatever they could. One day an officer asked to borrow a suitcase and that the next day Eva’s mother could send Eva to get it back. When Eva went to go and retrieve the suitcase the officer locked Eva in his office and she had to fend him off of herself. Eva got very lucky because 5 minutes after she was taken into the office someone knocked on the door. Eva escaped and ran back to her mother, telling her mother to never send her to retrieve anything ever again.  

In the beginning of June there were told to dress up and take their suitcases with whatever they had inside. They were taken to the train station, and all that was at the train station were empty cattle cars. They loaded 40-45 people into each cattle car, all-sitting on the floor and they were given no food. The ghetto was liquidated to Auschwitz at the end of June. Upon disembarking from the cattle cars to Auschwitz, men and women were separated and ordered to form rows of five. The cattle car journey took 3 and half days to get to Auschwitz.  

When they opened the car doors at Auschwitz there were already a lot of dead people, because they hadn’t had food or water. They were ordered to get out of the cattle cars by S.S. men with German Shepherds. They then had to separate into lines of men and women, 5 people in each row. They marched under the Arbeit Macht Friet sign in the lines, and then they marched in front of Mengle. At this point Eva went through selektion. She was with her Mom and her niece in the row. Mengle told her mother and niece to go to the left, and Eva was told to go to the right. At this time they did not know that to the right they got to survive. Eva was the youngest sibling growing up, with a large age difference. Her oldest sister was 14 years apart, her other sister 11 years apart and her middle sister was 9 years older.  

After the selection Eva’s mother looked back at her and said “Eva, Eva What’s going to happen to you?” Eva saw a big open truck, where her mother and niece were placed. Eva, as a young girl, had very long hair and immediately they were shaved. Later on Eva learned that they would use and sell the hair. And then the Nazis took away everything, their clothes and underwear. The only things they could keep were shoes. Eva was given an evening gown, and that was all. She had two sisters there with her and they could not recognize each other without their hair. She was with her sisters in block 10; there were 1,000 women per block. Her and her sisters were put on a top bunk with two other women. One of the women told Eva; “You see that smoke? That’s your mother and your father burning.” That was the first time Eva had heard of a crematorium. They were then given food, a big pot full of water and potatoes. But they had no plates or bowls so each one of them drank from the pot.
 
When they went to bed 12 people were in a bunk. 6 facing one way, 6 facing the other way and they all had to share one blanket. It was a terrible situation, when one person had to turn they all had to turn. They would be woken up at 4 in the morning to be counted. Before they were counted they were allowed to go to the bathroom and washroom. The toilets were nothing but a hole. And the washrooms only had water, no towels. Then they had to walk 5 in a line from around 5 to 5:30 am. Then they were given breakfast, black coffee but not real coffee and sometimes a piece of bread. The bread was made of sawdust, and occasionally they would get some marmalade made from beets. On rare occasions they would get a piece of cheese. The Germans themselves did not have that much to eat, and they had even smaller amounts for the prisoners. Every day new transports came, so each day they had to stand in the 5 across rows and any person that had a cut or injury, even if it was healed was sent to the crematoriums.
 
The Germans needed places for the new people, so they did this. In Birkenau sthere were 32 barracks and in each barrack there were 1,000 women. If a woman was pregnant in the camp she was sent to crematorium right away. If she had a baby in the camp the baby would be taken, killed and burned. The camp itself was very muddy, so one day the German soldiers decided that some of the women should be sent to dig anti-tank trenches, and fox holes for the soldiers. Eva was with her two sisters and they were supposed to take a train to Schlesiersee, which was on the border of Poland and Germany. They were taken to a barn and had to sleep on the hay. They were given a blanket, but it was still very cold because there was only one stove in the entire barn. They found potatoes and cut them with spoons. They had learned how to use spoons as tools in Auschwitz.
 
After a bit of time in Auschwitz they had been given spoons, and they would pound them to be flat so that they could spread things. So they would cut their potatoes to cook them on the stove. About 20 girls in the group came down with typhoid. Eva’s sister used to be a nurse. so she would watch the sick girls and check on how they were doing because they were in a separate rooms. Sometimes Eva’s sister would bring her pieces of stolen food in the middle of the night. The work was very difficult, digging foxholes because the ground was frozen. The women had been brought there in October, and by January the officers deemed it was not worth it.  

The German officers were also getting nervous because the Russian and American forces were getting closer. So they decided to move the transport of 1,000 girls, that’s how many they had taken from Auschwitz. They made them walk on a death march. The first ones who died on the march were the prisoners from Holland. They made them walk for 6 weeks to Bavaria. Eva did not have her shoes anymore because the soles of them had come off at Auschwitz. She had a grey blanket with her; all of the prisoners walking had one as well. Eva tore off strips from her blanket and wrapped them around her feet, but there was snow, Eva had to march for 6 weeks in the snow, it was incredibly difficult. Each night they would stay in different barns. They once stayed in a very large barn, and that morning the officers realized that some girls were missing. So they went with pitchforks to find the missing girl. They never found one of the missing girls.
 
Once in Bavaria they marched to a town called Helmbrechts, where there was a small camp. By the time Eva arrived to the town she was in a very bad condition, from her feet and hunger. Eva was put in the infirmary, where they were given water and potatoes, but the nurses at the infirmary ate all of the potatoes. Each morning when Eva would wake up she would often find dead women. The officers again were nervous that the American forces were close, so they were all taken out of the infirmary even though they couldn’t walk. The rest of the girls, including Eva’s sister, were given a loaf of bread. It was then that Eva decided to get up, because she knew that the other girls in the infirmary were going to be shot. This was very difficult for Eva because she could not yet walk. As she was being dragged to the other group of girls an S.S. woman took Eva’s number from Auschwitz and a few other girls and told them that tonight at twilight they would be shot. Eva was just 17.

At twilight the 19 chosen girls were lined up with the machine gun on the other side of them. Eva was the last person placed in the line. To this day Eva does not know how it happened but she was able to fall before the machine gun reached her, so she survived. The S.S. left and went back to the 55 remaining girls from the transport of 1,000. Eva was left there, lying on top of the dead bodies. Eva was still unable to walk so she was trapped there in the pile. A jeep came by around midnight and surveyed the pile not knowing if people were alive or dead. Eva was on the top of the pile and she did not breathe. The soldiers stepped on her while checking the bodies. The soldiers declared that they were all dead and so the soldiers left. Eva realized that she had to get out of there and try to work. Eva got up out of the pit and made her way to the forest on the other side. Eva fell into a hole next to a tree, and slept in that hole for 24 hours. When she woke up she had her spoon and her plate from Auschwitz. So she went into the town on a Monday and asked for them to give her some food. She was given dumplings and some fat. Her body wasn’t used to eating this kind of food because she hadn’t eaten any real food in a year.

No one in the town allowed Eva to sleep in their barn so she walked around the town, and stayed in the Forest. Evan then came to a farm and saw a woman with a 14-year-old boy and asked the woman if she could have something to eat. The woman invited her inside and gave her food to eat. The woman also allowed Eva to sleep on her farm. The building next to the farm was a factory for Ukrainian workers and the woman told Eva she could sleep on the top floor of that building. Eva then slept on the top floor of that building. Eva then got very sick from all of the fat and dumplings. No one believed Eva that she was 17 because she looked so sickly. The woman Eva was staying with was a doctor so she knew Eva’s condition. In one night the woman made Eva a dress and under clothes. Eva was then given a bath and after she washed she had the new dress and a bed and a washbasin had been set up for her. The woman knew how to treat Eva, and slowly reintroduced her to solid, regular food. Eva did not know this at the time but the town she was in had been taken over by the Americas. While staying with the woman she met another survivor who would become her husband.

One day the woman came to Eva and asked her to tell her, her story. So Eva did and the woman started crying, explaining that her husband had been taken by the American troops because he had been forced to join the S.S. to protect his farm. A few weeks after that time Eva wrote a letter to the Americans and the woman’s husband was released. Eva spent time in the hospital after that to try and heal. The Americans stationed at the hospital were horrified at Eva’s condition and made sure she was washed with alcohol and would check in on her treatment.

In the town they formed a Jewish Committee for the incoming refugees Eva was given a room there with another woman. Eva with other survivors decided to go on wagons to Bergen-Belsen. Her future husband was looking for his wife and was told at Bergen-Belsen she had not survived. Eva went and stayed with him and his first cousin. He would often steal food from the village. It was very difficult to make a living. They then decided to move to the U.S., they had a son in the village and when he was 2 hey took a ship to the U.S. from Hamburg.

They came to Boston with 100,000 immigrants. So they took a train to New York, because that was where her husband’s uncle was. They got an apartment in the city, and slowly started to learn English. Eva later learned that both her brother in law and her older sister had survived the Holocaust. Her older sister had been the one girl that had escaped the death march, and the soldiers never found.