Chava Livni

* 1926

  • “All I remember is that there was an old teacher of mine... Religionslehrerin... of religious instructions in the same part [of the train]. We’d always laughed at her a lot because she wore a wig, and whenever she got angry she did this with her wig. She had about nine children, devout. I held her three-year-old daughter for her, Mindl, because she didn’t have enough hands for those nine children. The child slept on top of me the whole journey. That was awful because I knew exactly what she was in for.”

  • “There would be someone telling some story in the evening or after work. Either a book that they’d read, or something they’d seen in the theatre - there was always some culture. Or we’d sing. I know that one of the SS women who guarded us - there were two decent ones - one of them, she was older by a bit, they sent her into retirement afterwards because she was over forty. We were inside the houses, and there was a path leading along the fence outside. There were days when we didn’t work, Easter or something, the sun was starting to shine more, we were sitting outside by the fence and she passed by. She didn’t even look at us, but as if to herself she muttered: ‘Don’t lost courage, girls, it’ll be over soon. Don’t give up.’ That was completely crazy, that she did that.”

  • “We arrived in Auschwitz. Everyone experienced the same thing. I don’t know why, but it always rained. It was raining, autumn. I met several girls there who’d shaved us and so on, who’d arrived there by transport in ’42 - those were veterans. They only confirmed what I already knew. Actually, I was surprised when, after the shower, they herded us into a house instead of a gas chamber.”

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    Kiryat Tivon, 08.05.2014

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Chava Livni
zdroj: Archiv pamětnice

Chava Livni, née Eva Fürstová, was born on 21 July 1926 into an assimilated, German-speaking Jewish family in Bratislava. In 1941 she joined the Zionist youth movement Makabi Hacair. The movement organised practical retraining courses, where whole groups of youths lived in a communal way and prepared to emigrate to Palestine. The movement later specialised in helping persecuted Jews. Chava participated in the forging of documents. The Bratislava Jews were raided on 29 September 1944, and the whole of the Fürst family was arrested. They were taken to a camp in Sereď and then to Auschwitz. Chava stayed together with her younger sister Agi. Their mother was sent straight into the gas chambers. Chava and her sister were transferred to Freiberg near Dresden, which was part of Flossenbürg concentration camp; they worked in a factory making aircraft parts. In late April 1945 they were taken to Mauthausen concentration camp, where they were liberated. They returned to Bratislava and began working with Jewish war orphans in a villa that was assigned to them. Chava met Max Lieben there; the two married in 1946. They travelled to Haifa in May 1949. At first, they lived in a kibbutz, but they later moved into a house of their own in Kiryat Tivon, where they live to this day.