Lily Ebert, Who Kept Holocaust Memory Alive on TikTok, 100

Ebert, a Hungarian-born Auschwitz survivor who devoted herself to keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive, including on TikTok, where she drew millions of viewers with her testimonials. She also wrote a best-selling memoir, Lily’s Promise.

The title of Ebert’s book referenced a pledge that she made to herself on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, as a 20-year-old prisoner at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland, in 1944. Her mother and her two youngest siblings had been sent directly to the gas chamber. Beneath the heavy smoke from the crematorium, Ebert vowed that she would “tell the world what had happened” not only to her “but to all the people who could not tell their stories.”

Ebert spoke to students, to historians, to politicians, and to journalists. In February 2021, her TikTok account started and it made her an unexpected social media celebrity. In one video, she showed the tattoo branded on her arm upon her arrival at Auschwitz, number A-10572. The TikTok account attracted 2 million followers. In 2023, Ebert was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire by King Charles III in recognition of her efforts to educate the public about the Holocaust. 

In Auschwitz, she wrote, “a pall hung over everything, blocking out the sun. The foul smell that had choked us on our arrival, the most sickening and overwhelming smell I had ever experienced, was getting stronger and stronger. Not far away was a tall chimney, smoking furiously, with flames emerging red and bright.” “What kind of factory is that?” she asked another prisoner. “What are they making here? What’s this horrible smell?” “They’re burning your families there,” the woman replied. “Your parents, your sisters, your brothers. They’re burning them.”

After Ebert’s death, King Charles offered his condolences, as did British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In a statement recalling Ebert’s vow to speak of what she had witnessed, Starmer said that she had kept her promise “in the most remarkable way,” and that now “we must keep our promise to her” by carrying forward the memory of the Holocaust.

Image Credit: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

Read the October 11, 2024 Washington Post article.

 Book Review

A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal

Elie Wiesel, fwd. Little, Brown and Company: 2009. Pp xvi, 228. $24.99.

This memoir by the late Thomas Buergenthal (1934-2023), a Judge in the International Court of Justice in The Hague as well as in several other human rights courts, tells how his survival of Auschwitz which he entered at age 10 after surviving two ghettos and a labor camp influenced his long career as a stellar human rights lawyer and advocate. As the Amazon book description concludes: "A Lucky Child is a book that demands to be read by all."

"It was more than luck and the good for­tune of his ​“Aryan” fea­tures that enabled him to sur­vive the war — it was his strength, wis­dom, and enor­mous faith that he would one day sur­vive and be reunit­ed with his parents. Amaz­ing­ly, Thomas was reunit­ed with his moth­er short­ly after the war and then moved to the Unit­ed States and began a career as lawyer and then as a judge. He has ded­i­cat­ed his career to fight­ing against the human rights vio­la­tions that he expe­ri­enced as a child."

*****

Sources:

(1) Amazon book description.

(2) Read the book review in ReformJudaism.org.

(3) Read the December 22, 2011 Jewish Book Council book review.

(4) Photo courtesy of Amazon.com.