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I Survived Auschwitz

January 13, 2025

Eva Umlauf is one of the youngest survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. She has no active memory of the time she spent there. For more than 70 years, her past and her family’s fate played no role in her life.

https://p.dw.com/p/4nYyq
I Survived Auschwitz
After suffering a heart attack in February 2014, Eva Umlauf decided to share her experiences publicly. Her memoirs were published in March 2016. Image: BR

But when she suffered a heart attack at the age of 74, she realized that she had to come to terms with this part of her life. 

I Survived Auschwitz
Eva Umlauf was born in the Nováky labour camp, a Slovak transit camp from which people of Jewish origin were deported to extermination camps in occupied Poland. After almost two years in this camp, she was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp with her mother, who was four months pregnant at the time. It was the last transport from Sered; she did not reach Auschwitz until 2 November 1944. Image: BR

Eva Umlauf was two years old, emaciated and extremely ill when the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz camp on January 27, 1945. 

I Survived Auschwitz
Image: BR

Her mother returned with her two daughters to her father's birthplace, near Bratislava. Everyone else in the family was dead. A shadow of trauma lay over Eva’s young life.

During her medical studies, she met her first husband Jakob, a Polish Jew, and followed him to Munich. She found happiness and security at his side.

I Survived Auschwitz
Image: BR

But a few years later, Jakob died in a tragic accident. Eva was left on her own to fend for herself and her young son. Eventually, she remarried and had two more sons. 

I Survived Auschwitz
Eva Umlauf is a Slovakian-German pediatrician, psychotherapist, survivor of the Shoah and contemporary witness. She is one of the youngest survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp.Image: BR

Later in life, her past suddenly caught up with her. She decided to consciously confront it, to give her children and grandchildren a life less burdened by the past.

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