Dear Friends,
Seventy-five years ago, four days before our 11th birthday, my sister Miriam and I sought shelter inside a barrack at Auschwitz I. My memory of that day is very vivid. We woke up on that morning and all the terrible sounds of war were eerily silent. A woman suddenly came into the barrack yelling loudly, "We are free! We are free!" As children, we thought she had given way to madness after all this time. Miriam, my twin sister, had talked about the idea before: Freedom. We wondered, could it be that THIS would be the day that we would be FREE? But, what did that mean? "Free.”

Along with many others, we went outside to see what was happening. There were many people, but one group attracted our attention because they were wearing white camouflaged coats, and they didn't look like the Nazis, so that had to be good. It was the Soviet Army, there to liberate us. We went up to them, and they gave us cookies, chocolates and hugs; everything a child could have dreamt about at that moment. That was when I realized that Miriam and I were free and alive, and we had survived. We desperately wanted to go home and find our family, but at age 10, certainly did not know how to accomplish that great feat by ourselves. It was only because of fellow survivor, Mrs. Rosalia Csengeri, who knew my mother pre-war, that we ever arrived home safely. These are only a few of my memories; it is these memories that are the source of my strength and motivations for many of my actions.

Click here to read Eva's full speech.