Éva Fahidi
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Éva Pusztai-Fahidi (22 October 1925 – 11 September 2023) was a Hungarian author and
Holocaust survivor Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, its collaborators before and during World War II ...
. She and her family were deported to the
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...
in 1944.


Early life

Éva Fahidi was born on 22 October 1925 in
Debrecen Debrecen ( ; ; ; ) is Hungary's cities of Hungary, second-largest city, after Budapest, the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain Regions of Hungary, region and the seat of Hajdú-Bihar County. A city with county rights, it was the large ...
and grew up in an
upper-class Upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of people who hold the highest social status. Usually, these are the wealthiest members of class society, and wield the greatest political power. According to this view, the upper cla ...
Hungarian-Jewish The history of the Jews in Hungary dates back to at least the Kingdom of Hungary, with some records even predating the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in 895 CE by over 600 years. Written sources prove that Jewish communities lived i ...
family. In 1936, her family converted to
Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
. On 29 April 1944, the Hungarian
gendarmerie A gendarmerie () is a paramilitary or military force with law enforcement duties among the civilian population. The term ''gendarme'' () is derived from the medieval French expression ', which translates to " men-at-arms" (). In France and so ...
, who worked together with the Eichmann commando, arrested her, her parents Irma and Dezső Fahidi, and her eleven years old sister Gilike, and locked the family with other Jews in the city in a newly built
ghetto A ghetto is a part of a city in which members of a minority group are concentrated, especially as a result of political, social, legal, religious, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished than other ...
that served as a prison. On 14 May 1944, they were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where her mother and sister were selected to die in the gas chambers by SS doctor
Josef Mengele Josef Mengele (; 16 March 19117 February 1979) was a Nazi German (SS) officer and physician during World War II at the Russian front and then at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, often dubbed the "Angel of Death" (). He performed Nazi hum ...
. Her father died from inhuman prison conditions. After six weeks, she was transferred to the Münchmühle satellite camp belonging to the
Buchenwald concentration camp Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Nazi Germany, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (pre-1938 ...
, where she had to work for 12 hours a day for the Allendorf and Herrenwald explosives plants. At the end of the war, she was able to escape during a
death march A death march is a forced march of prisoners of war, other captives, or deportees in which individuals are left to die along the way. It is distinct from simple prisoner transport via foot march. Article 19 of the Geneva Convention requires tha ...
.


After the Nazis

After months of wandering as a displaced person, Fahidi returned to Debrecen on 4 November 1945. Other people had taken over her parents' house and refused her entry. In the
People's Republic of Hungary The Hungarian People's Republic (HPR) was a landlocked country in Central Europe from its formation on 20 August 1949 until the establishment of the current Republic of Hungary on 23 October 1989. It was a professed communist state, govern ...
, Fahidi conformed to the expectations of the regime and did not speak publicly about her experiences during the Nazi era. She joined the
Hungarian communists Hungarian may refer to: * Hungary, a country in Central Europe * Kingdom of Hungary, state of Hungary, existing between 1000 and 1946 * Hungarians/Magyars, ethnic groups in Hungary * Hungarian algorithm, a polynomial time algorithm for solving the ...
and hoped for a better society. She worked as an industrial employee and thanks to her knowledge of French, rose to become the external representative of the Hungarian steel
combine Combine may refer to: Machinery * Combine harvester, or combine, a machine to harvest grain crops * Seed drill, or combine seeder, a machine to plant seeds Company structure * Corporate group, an industrial business group in Western democrac ...
. She avoided encounters with Germans and never wanted to speak the language of the perpetrators again, but continued to read works by German authors.


Witness to the Shoah

The administration of
Stadtallendorf Stadtallendorf is a town in the district of Marburg-Biedenkopf, Hesse, Germany. It lies about east of Marburg. In 2010, the town hosted the 50th Hessentag state festival. Geography Location Under the German system of ''Naturräume'', Stadta ...
, formerly Allendorf, published an advertisement in Hungarian newspapers, looking for former prisoners of the Münchmühle satellite camp in 1989. Fahidi was persuaded to go to Germany as a translator, and in October 1990 she took part in a week-long meeting in Stadtallendorf, where local representatives asked the former prisoners for forgiveness. Thereafter she visited the site regularly, giving lectures and interviews, questioning other contemporary witnesses, and guiding school classes through the memorial. Among other things, items of clothing she and her sister owned from their time in prison are exhibited there. In July 2003, on the exact anniversary of her arrival in 1944, she also visited the memorials of the Auschwitz death camp. She later spoke regularly to groups in the youth meeting center in
Oświęcim Oświęcim (; ; ; ) is a town in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship in southern Poland, situated southeast of Katowice, near the confluence of the Vistula (''Wisła'') and Soła rivers. Oświęcim dates back to the 12th century, when it was an im ...
. According to her statement, telling the horrors she experienced there and which she had kept silent about until 2003 became a form of trauma processing: "''It's really a release for me that I can now talk about it as much as I can want… Otherwise I would go insane''." Thereafter she wrote down her memories. The book ''Anima rerum'' was first published in 2004 in a German translation and reprinted in 2011. In 2011, Fahidi agreed to testify as a co-plaintiff in the criminal trials against the former concentration camp guards Hans Lipschis and
Johann Breyer Johann Breyer (May 30, 1925 – July 22, 2014) was a Czech-American tool and die maker and onetime SS-Totenkopfverbände concentration and death camp guard whom the United States Department of Justice Office of Special Investigations (OSI) unsu ...
. In 1944, both, while in a ''Sturmbann'' (roughly "assault group"), had been involved in the murder of Hungarian Jews by the SS-Totenkopf units in Auschwitz-Birkenau, possibly also in the selection of the Fahidi family. According to her own statement, it was not about punishing the perpetrators, but about publicly witnessing their story. Fahidi was a joint plaintiff in the trial against
Oskar Gröning Oskar Gröning (10 June 1921 – 9 March 2018) was a German SS '' Unterscharführer'' who was stationed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. His responsibilities included counting and sorting the money taken from prisoners, and he was in charge ...
in 2015 and took part in the trial. That same year, she appeared in a dance theatre play about her life called "Sea Lavender". The
German Resistance Memorial Center The German Resistance Memorial Center () is a memorial and museum in Berlin, capital of Germany. History It was opened in 1980 in part of the Bendlerblock, a complex of offices in Stauffenbergstrasse (formerly Bendlerstrasse), south of the Groß ...
dedicated an exhibition to Fahidi in 2019, the opening of which she performed at. As one of the last survivors of the Shoah, she expressed the hope that the memory of it would be effectively kept alive after her death through books, documents and places of remembrance: "''It must not and cannot happen again''." The Holocaust was a terrible shock to humanity. This may only become fully clear after the death of the last witness. The time after that could usher in a new kind of culture of remembrance. She hopes that everyone will then realize "that they have to get involved". On 11 April 2020, the city of
Weimar Weimar is a city in the state (Germany), German state of Thuringia, in Central Germany (cultural area), Central Germany between Erfurt to the west and Jena to the east, southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together w ...
made Éva Fahidi-Pusztai an
honorary citizen Honorary citizenship is a status bestowed by a city or other government on a foreign or native individual whom it considers to be especially admirable or otherwise worthy of the distinction. The honor usually is symbolic and does not confer an ...
. Éva Fahidi died in Budapest on 11 September 2023, at the age of 97.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fahidi, Eva 1925 births 2023 deaths People from Debrecen 20th-century Hungarian women writers 20th-century Hungarian writers 21st-century Hungarian women writers Hungarian Holocaust survivors Auschwitz concentration camp survivors Buchenwald concentration camp survivors 20th-century Hungarian Jews Hungarian communists Nazi concentration camp survivors Jewish women writers Activists against antisemitism 21st-century Hungarian Jews