An Auschwitz survivor has said that she never dreamt that she would require police protection during her visits to German schools where she goes to tell her story.
Eva Szepesi, 92, has been talking about her ordeal as a 12-year-old girl in the Nazi concentration camp for years.
But after 7th October 2023, when Hamas led a brutal attack on Israelis and antisemitism around the world increased following Israel’s military invasion of Gaza, she realised that schools were becoming afraid of her presence.
Eva, who was tattooed with ‘A26877’, was kept with her family in the Nazi extermination camp where she lost her mother, brother and father.
She has been visiting schools across Germany for nearly 30 years.
She told pupils how she believed for decades that she would still find her mother and in recent years, she read from her book “A Girl Alone on the Run”.
There have never been any incidents or hostilities at her talks.
She recently told local media: “First, several meetings at the schools were cancelled after 7th October.”
Eva continued: “They said they were concerned about my safety. So my meetings with the students, which were planned for the anniversary of the Kristallnacht, around 9th November 2023, all cancelled.”
When Eva was able to perform again, a school called the police to protect the Auschwitz survivor during the meeting with the young people. The teachers acted preventively, according to German media.
Eva’s daughter Anita Schwarz, 60, said: “We now have the feeling that my mother is often a kind of fire brigade that has to put out fires at school.”
She added: “For example, a school in Frankfurt asked my mother to perform there because there had been antisemitic incidents there.”
Eva said: “It makes me personally very sad that now, at my age, I need police protection when I want to talk to students about what I experienced 80 years ago.”
Yesterday marked 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army on 27th January 1945.
King Charles III became the first British head of state to visit Auschwitz, where he attended a commemoration event to mark 80 years since its liberation.
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Story By: Joseph Golder, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash
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