Voices That Endure: An Auschwitz Survivor's Account on the 80th Anniversary of Liberation

Quick answer: Who was Livia Bitton-Jackson?

Born Elli Friedmann in Samorin in 1931, Livia Bitton-Jackson was deported to Auschwitz with her family in 1944 at age 13. She, her mother, and her brother survived camps including Plaszow, Augsburg, and a Dachau subcamp. She became a professor and author of the memoir I Have Lived a Thousand Years, and died in 2023.

Livia Bitton-Jackson was born Elli Friedmann on February 28, 1931, in Samorin, a Hungarian-speaking town that became part of Czechoslovakia after the First World War. When Germany occupied Hungary in 1944, Jewish families were barred from public places and then forced into ghettos. Her father was sent to a labor camp, and Livia, her mother, brother, and aunt were taken to the ghetto at Nagymagyar. Two weeks later they were deported to Auschwitz. Livia was thirteen. She and her mother survived the selection and were sent to Plaszow, near Krakow, to level hillsides under the clubs of the Kapos, then back to Auschwitz, then to a factory in Augsburg making aircraft instruments. In April 1945 they were moved to a Dachau subcamp, where Livia found her brother Bubi alive. Her father did not survive. After liberation she came to the United States, earned a doctorate, taught for decades, and wrote memoirs including I Have Lived a Thousand Years. She died on May 17, 2023, at 92, and is buried in Jerusalem. John shares her story because survivors' voices are what keep the world from forgetting.

Why it matters for leaders: Firsthand testimony is one of the strongest protections we have against forgetting, and it is up to us to keep it in circulation.

Q: What book did Livia Bitton-Jackson write?

A: Her memoir Elli: Coming of Age in the Holocaust (1980), adapted for young readers as I Have Lived a Thousand Years (1997).

Q: When was Auschwitz liberated?

A: Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, now International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Read the full article on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/voices-endure-auschwitz-survivors-account-80th-john-fenzel-k5aje

By John Fenzel, founder and CEO of Heroes' Path Foundation