Lily Ebert was a Holocaust survivor and author who became a social media sensation when she took her quest to find the soldier who rescued her from a concentration camp to TikTok.
- Died: October 9, 2024 (Who else died on October 9?)
- Details of death: Died in London at the age of 100.
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Lily Ebert’s legacy
Lily Ebert was 20 when the Nazis invaded her native Hungary. She, her mother, and four of her five siblings were quickly rounded up and sent to the death camp at Auschwitz. Her mother, one of her brothers, and one of her sisters were almost immediately executed. Ebert and her other sisters were put to work, while her remaining brother toiled elsewhere. After four months of hard labor, she was transferred to Leipzig, again laboring in the face of death. She was rescued by Allied forces in 1945.
Ebert, with her sisters, found refuge in Switzerland, eventually reuniting with her brother. The siblings moved to Israel, where Ebert settled down and had started a family, then to London. For many years, she remained quiet about what she suffered, not wanting to relive her pain. When her husband, Shmuel, died in the 1980s, however, Ebert began to reconsider her silence. Deciding that perhaps her story needed to be told, she began speaking about the trauma she’d endured not just to family, but to students, organizations, and even the British Houses of Parliament.
In 2021, Ebert released her autobiography, “Lily’s Promise: How I Survived Auschwitz and Found the Strength to Live.” The book was co-authored with her great-grandson, Dov Forman, during the COVID-19 pandemic, became a best seller, and included a forward by King Charles. She also launched a quest to find relatives of the U.S. soldier who rescued her, Pvt. Hayman Shulman. Her quest went viral on platforms like TikTok, where she answered questions about her painful past, and Ebert was able to find Shulman’s family. They met in 2022.
Ebert was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2023. She had previously won the British Empire Medal (BEM) in 2016, the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Hungary in 2022, among other honors.
Notable quote
“If I ever came out of that place, I was determined to do something that would change everything. I had to make sure that nothing like this could ever happen again to anybody. So I promised myself I would tell the world what had happened. Not just to me, but to all the people who could not tell their stories.” — excerpt from “Lily’s Promise: How I Survived Auschwitz and Found the Strength to Live”
Tributes to Lily Ebert
Full obituary: The Jewish Chronicle
