We were privileged to be given the opportunity to arrange Eva Lavi’s (Prisoner Number 76404) speaking engagements and in Christchurch alone approximately 350 history students from Middleton Grange, Burnside HS, Papanui HS, Rangi Ruru and Villa Maria College heard her speak.
Kudos to the Kate Macpherson, Heather Burgess, NZ Zionist Federation and the Wellington Holocaust Centre for making it all possible.
Anna Turner from the Christchurch Press attended the talk and here is her article:
At 2-years-old she was removed from her home and crowded into Poland’s Krakow Ghetto. At 5-years-old she was taken to the Plaszow Labour Camp where she witnessed unspeakable horrors. And at 8-years-old she was saved from certain death by Oskar Schindler.
Reporter ANNA TURNER speaks to Holocaust survivor Eva Lavi, who was in Christchurch yesterday.
Holocaust survivor Eva Lavi’s voice cracks with emotion as she describes herself as a “child of miracles”.
The softly-spoken woman was just two years old when war broke out in Europe and she and her family were forced into a life of unimaginable horror.
Over the next six years, Lavi narrowly escaped death on many occasions and was ultimately saved by Oskar Schindler, whose story was made famous in the movie Schindler’s List.
Now 76-years-old, Lavi has visited Christchurch to share her incredible tale of survival.
In 1939, Lavi was living in Poland with her parents, Fela and Wilek Rac, when the war broke out. The family was forced into the cramped Krakow Ghetto along with 15,000 other Jews.
Survivors forced out of dugouts during the liquidation of the Ghetto
Within the first month, Lavi’s grandparents were killed for being “too old”.
Her mother told her if she wanted to survive she would have to “be like a little robot”.
“She said ‘Don’t cry, don’t be noticed, be obedient’. So I did what she said.”
The main entrance of Plaszow
Lavi recalled one incident where the Nazis came to the ghetto, looking for children, and her mother shoved her out the window.
“She told me to cling on to the drainpipe and wait until they had gone. It was minus 30 degrees out and I almost froze to death,” Lavi recalled.
“When my mother came and got me I was like an ice-block, but she defrosted me.”
At another point, her father tried to feed the family poison as he “believed it would be better for them all to die” than to continue living in the ghetto.
Her mother stopped him, telling Lavi the family had to keep fighting.
Read more.
Here is the National Radio Interview: aft-20130417-1420-schindlers_list_survivor-048
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