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A survivor in Isolation: 'This is not my first hurdle'

'I take every day as it comes' says Eva Klein, who turned 91 this week

May 7, 2020 11:22
Eva Klein
4 min read

“I didn’t even dream about being alive at the age of ninety-one,” Holocaust survivor Eva Klein tells me over the phone on her birthday, seventy-five years after she was liberated from Theresiensdadt by the Red Army, on 8th May.

Yesterday she celebrates her birthday, alone under lockdown. Having been through so much during her life, including dodging a bullet aimed to kill her, it is her resilience that has enabled her to cope well throughout her life, even in isolation today during Covid-19.

Eva Klein, nee Adler, was born on 6 May 1929, the youngest of four children in an orthodox family. Her father had died when she was very young, so her mother, who owned a grocery shop, raised her single-handedly in Debrecen, Hungary.

When the Nazis invaded her home town in April 1944 the Jews were moved to a small ghetto, then a larger one, before being sent to a brick factory, where they were imprisoned for a week. In May 1944, Eva and her family, were forced onto the waiting cattle carts, one bucket of water for the group of eighty Jews. The destination, she later found out, was Auschwitz. But as the railways were bombed the train turned around and was redirected to Austria. They were sent to Strasshof Concentration Camp, near Vienna, where they worked as forced labourers.