Éva Fahidi

Éva Pusztai-Fahidi (22 October 1925 – 11 September 2023) was a Hungarian author and Holocaust survivor. She and her family were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1944.[1]

Éva Fahidi
Fahidi in 2019
Born(1925-10-22)22 October 1925
Debrecen, Hungary
Died11 September 2023(2023-09-11) (aged 97)
Budapest, Hungary
Other namesÉva Pusztai-Fahidi
Known forHolocaust survivor

Early life

Éva Fahidi was born on 22 October 1925 in Debrecen[2] and grew up in an upper-class Hungarian-Jewish family. In 1936, her family converted to Catholicism. On 29 April 1944, the Hungarian gendarmerie, who worked together with the Eichmann commando, arrested her, her parents Irma and Dezső Fahidi, and her sister Gilike, and locked the family with other Jews in the city in a newly built ghetto that served as a prison.[3]

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. Her father died from inhuman prison conditions. After six weeks, she was transferred to the Münchmühle satellite camp belonging to the Buchenwald concentration camp, 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.[4][5]

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.[6] In the People's Republic of Hungary, 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 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.[7] She avoided encounters with Germans and never wanted to speak the language of the perpetrators again, but continued to read works by German authors.[8]

Witness to the Shoah

The administration of Stadtallendorf, 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.[9][10]

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. 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."[11][12] Thereafter she wrote down her memories. The book Anima rerum was first published in 2004 in a German translation and reprinted in 2011.[13][14]

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. 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.[15]

Fahidi was a joint plaintiff in the trial against Oskar Gröning in 2015 and took part in the trial. That same year, she appeared in a dance theatre play about her life called "Sea Lavender".[16][17]

The German Resistance Memorial Center 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".[18][19]

On 11 April 2020, the city of Weimar made Éva Fahidi-Pusztai an honorary citizen.[20][21]

Éva Fahidi died in Budapest on 11 September 2023, at the age of 97.[22]

References
  1. Inotai, Edit (14 March 2023). "Truth in an Age of Deceit: Eva Fahidi Warns Against Resurgence of Hate in Hungary". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  2. Genzlinger, Neil (14 September 2023). "Éva Fahidi, Outspoken Holocaust Survivor, Dies at 97". The New York Time. Retrieved 15 September 2023.
  3. Fahidi, Éva (2020). Soul of Things: Memoir of a Youth Interrupted. University of Toronto Press. p. 137. ISBN 978-1-4875-2512-5.
  4. "Auschwitz-Prozess: Dem Unsagbaren eine Stimme geben". Berliner Zeitung (in German). 19 September 2013. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  5. Rees, Laurence (10 January 2006). Auschwitz: A New History. PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1-58648-357-9.
  6. Knigge, Volkhard; Löffelsender, Michael; Lüttgenau, Rikola-Gunnar; Stein, Harry (2016). Buchenwald: Ausgrenzung und Gewalt, 1937 bis 1945 : Begleitband zur Dauerausstellung in der Gedenkstätte Buchenwald (in German). Wallstein Verlag. ISBN 978-3-8353-1810-6.
  7. Caddick-Adams, Peter (6 June 2022). Fire and Steel: The End of World War Two in the West. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-060188-1.
  8. Davies, Peter; Davies, Peter J. (2018). Witness Between Languages: The Translation of Holocaust Testimonies in Context. Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 978-1-64014-029-5.
  9. Macadam, Heather Dune; Moorehead, Caroline (21 January 2021). The Nine Hundred: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-1-5293-2935-3.
  10. Cílek, Roman (1 January 2021). Eichmann: Architekt holocaustu: Zločiny, dopadení a proces, který změnil dějiny (in Arabic). Epocha. ISBN 978-80-7557-001-7.
  11. Strauß, Marina (30 January 2019). "Holocaust: Wenn es keine Zeitzeugen mehr gibt [Holocaust: When there are no more contemporary witnesses]". DW.COM (in German). Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  12. "Alter und neuer Judenhass in Ungarn, 25.06.2011 (Friedensratschlag)". www.ag-friedensforschung.de. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  13. Fahidi, Éva (2005). Anima rerum: a dolgok lelke (in Hungarian). Tudomány Kiadó. ISBN 978-963-8194-54-1.
  14. Morgen, Markus (5 July 2022). Wir Bunkermenschen: Ein historisch-politisches Gedankenspiel (in German). BoD – Books on Demand. ISBN 978-3-86812-528-3.
  15. Cílek, Roman (1 January 2015). Půjdu do pekla spokojen: Adolf Eichmann: Životní dráha masového vraha (in Czech). Epocha. ISBN 978-80-7425-449-9.
  16. "Holocaust survivor Eva Fahidi dances for remembrance – DW – 11/09/2017". dw.com. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  17. Murphy, Peter. "90-year-old Auschwitz survivor triumphs in sell-out dance duet". www.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  18. Kessen, Peter (2004). Von der Kunst des Erbens: die "Flick-Collection" und die Berliner Republik (in German). Philo. ISBN 978-3-86572-521-9.
  19. Ganzenmüller, Jörg; Utz, Raphael (10 October 2016). Orte der Shoah in Polen: Gedenkstätten zwischen Mahnmal und Museum (in German). Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar. ISBN 978-3-412-50316-1.
  20. Baar, Michael (13 April 2020). "Éva Pusztai und Ivan Ivanji sind nun Weimarer Ehrenbürger". www.thueringer-allgemeine.de (in German). Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  21. Stadtallendorf, Stadt. "Überlebensrückblicke. Die Ausstellung »Evas Apfelsuppe« über das Leben von Eva Pusztai-Fahidi". Stadt Stadtallendorf (in German). Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  22. "Prominent Hungarian Holocaust Survivor Eva Fahidi Dies". Barron's. 11 September 2023. Retrieved 11 September 2023.
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