Éva Fahidi was a Hungarian author and Holocaust survivor who, after seeing her family killed in Auschwitz and surviving forced labor at Buchenwald, wrote the memoir, “The Soul of Things.”
- Died: September 11, 2023 (Who else died on September 11?)
- Details of death: Died in Budapest, Hungary, at the age of 97.
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Éva Fahidi’s legacy
At 18 years old, Fahidi was pulled from her home in Debrecen, Hungary and sent to Auschwitz with her family. Both her mother and her 11-year-old sister were killed in the gas chambers while her father and some 46 other relatives perished in the camp’s inhumane conditions. Fahidi survived Auschwitz and forced labor at Buchenwald before eventually escaping during one of the death marches near the end of the war. She returned to Hungary and for many decades afterward, she could not speak of what she had seen and experienced.
In 1990, she began visiting Germany again, where she gave talks, interviewed other survivors, and began to confront what she had experienced. In 2003, she visited the memorial at Auschwitz and vowed to no longer be silent. The result was a memoir about her life and experiences, originally published in a German translation as “Anima rerum” and later in English as “The Soul of Things.”
From then on, Fahidi became an advocate, often making appearances to speak about the Holocaust and working on behalf of its victims. She participated in lawsuits against former camp guards and ensured survivors had their stories told. For her work, Fahidi was honored with an exhibition at the German Resistance Memorial Center, and was named an honorary citizen of Weimar, Germany.
Notable quote
“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.”—from a 2019 interview in DW Global Media
Tributes to Éva Fahidi
Full obituary: The New York Times
