The Hungarian Auschwitz survivor Fahidi-Pusztai is dead. She worked well into her old age against forgetting the Holocaust. As a contemporary witness, she also warned of right-wing populist dangers in Germany.
Hungarian Holocaust survivor Eva Fahidi-Pusztai has died in Budapest at the age of 97. This was announced by the International Auschwitz Committee (IAK) in Berlin.
Born in 1925 in Debrecen, eastern Hungary, Eva Fahidi survived deportation to Auschwitz as an 18-year-old, as well as imprisonment and forced labor in Allendorf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. It was only many years after the liberation that she tirelessly tried to pass on her memories to those born after her.
Narrative contemporary witness
“The survivors of Auschwitz thank with admiration and affection a great woman who, throughout her life, countered the death of Auschwitz with her memories, her creativity and her joy of life,” wrote Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice President of the IAK. Despite the loss of her parents and sister, who were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp, she persisted in her joy of life and trusted the power of memory.
Fahidi-Pusztai wrote books and appeared in public as a contemporary witness. She came to Germany again and again to seek conversations with more than just young people. She constantly warned of the dangers of right-wing populist mobilizations and right-wing extremist violence.
“A strong heart has stopped beating. I am infinitely sad,” wrote Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow in the short message service X (formerly Twitter). “Eva Fahidi-Pusztai gave the victims of National Socialism a voice,” wrote Thuringia’s state parliament president Birgit Pommer.
Honorary citizen of the city of Weimar
At the age of 90, Fahidi-Pusztai appeared as a dancer in a production at Budapest’s Vig Theater that focused on her life. She was a member of the advisory board of the Buchenwald Memorial. In 2012 she received the Federal Cross of Merit. In 2020, the city of Weimar made her an honorary citizen.
In German usage, the Holocaust refers primarily to the systematic murder of around six million Jews during the National Socialist dictatorship in Germany. In the spring of 1944, half a million Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz from Hungary, which was allied with the German Reich during World War II. Most of them were murdered in the gas chambers there.