Livia Bitton-Jackson / Elli L. Friedmann (F / Czechia, 1931), Holocaust survivor

Livia Bitton-Jackson / Elli L. Friedmann (F / Czechia, 1931), Holocaust survivor.

• KEYWORDS : <Czechoslovakia> <Auschwitz> <Dachau> -- <United States>

• MEMOIRS : Elli (1980) -- I Have Lived a Thousand Years (1997)

Biography

Livia Bitton-Jackson (b.1931) was born as Elli L. Friedmann in Samorin, Czechoslovakia, on February 28, 1931. She was 13 years old when her family was taken to Ghetto Nagymagyar. Eventually, they were transported to Auschwitz, and other camp, until liberation. Bitton-Jackson came to the U.S. on a refugee boat in 1951 to join her brother, who was studying in New York. She studied at New York University, from which she received a Ph.D. in Hebrew Culture and Jewish History. She was then a professor of history at City University of New York for 37 years.

Book : Elli (1980)

• Elli : Coming of Age in the Holocaust (New York : Times Books, 1980).

"In a wrenching memoir of pain, persecution, and degradation, the author relives the Nazi terrors that engulfed her and her family in Czechoslovakia. She also relates the horrors of the concentration camp ... From her small, sunny hometown between the beautiful Carpathian Mountains and the blue Danube River, Elli Friedmann was taken-at a time when most girls are growing up, having boyfriends and embarking upon the adventure of life-and thrown into the murderous hell of Hitler's Final Solution. When Elli emerged from Auschwitz and Dachau just over a year later, she was fourteen. She looked like a sixty-year-old. This account of horrifyingly brutal inhumanity-and dogged survival - is Elli's true story."--Publisher description

Book : I Have Lived a Thousand Years (1997)

• I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1997).

In 1997 the author wrote a version of her autobiography for juvenile audience.

"What is death all about? What is life all about? So wonders thirteen-year-old Elli Friedmann as she fights for her life in a Nazi concentration camp. A remarkable memoir, I Have Lived a Thousand Years is a story of cruelty and suffering, but at the same time a story of hope, faith, perseverance, and love. It wasn’t long ago that Elli led a normal life that included family, friends, school, and thoughts about boys. A life in which Elli could lie and daydream for hours that she was a beautiful and elegant celebrated poet. But these adolescent daydreams quickly darken in March 1944, when the Nazis invade Hungary. First Elli can no longer attend school, have possessions, or talk to her neighbors. Then she and her family are forced to leave their house behind to move into a crowded ghetto, where privacy becomes a luxury of the past and food becomes a scarcity. Her strong will and faith allow Elli to manage and adjust, but what she doesn’t know is that this is only the beginning. The worst is yet to come..."--Publisher description.

Dachau Memorial

Livia Bitton-Jackson is born Elvira Friedmann in Šamorín in 1930. Upon Hungarian troops occupying the Czechoslovakian town in 1938, the Jewish family is faced with ever-increasing discrimination. After German troops move into and occupy Hungary in March 1944, the family has to resettle to the Nagymagyar ghetto. Almost immediately the father is sent to the Komárom labor camp and Livia Bitton-Jackson and other family members deported to Auschwitz. The SS transfers her with her mother to the Płaszów concentration camp, where they are forced to perform heavy labor. In the fall of 1944 the two are sent via Auschwitz to the Dachau subcamp of Augsburg-Kriegshaber, a forced labor site producing armaments for the air force. As the Allies close in, the SS transport mother and daughter to the so-called woods camp near Mühldorf at the beginning of April 1945. Together with a brother already there, they are then placed on an evacuation transport without food and water. U.S. Army troops liberate the transport in Seeshaupt on Lake Starnberg at the end of April. Back in her home town, Livia Bitton-Jackson finds out that her father had died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. With her mother she follows her brother to New York in 1951. After gaining a doctorate in Hebrew culture and Jewish history, she becomes a history professor. In 1977 she emigrates to Israel. Her book I Have Lived a Thousand Years. Growing up in the Holocaust, the story of her persecution by the Nazis, is addressed to young readers.