By Alya Theriault
CMS, Grade 6
Editors note: this story was written after Alya Theriault and her fellow students in Cathy Bouchard’s class read the book ‘Hana’s stuicase,’ by Karen Levine.’
Hungary was a staunch ally of Nazi Germany. As such, the Germans did not, at first, invade the country, but urged the government to deport its Jews to concentration camps. The Hungarian government was not willing to send it’s Jewish citizens to their deaths, but did pass many discriminatory laws against them. Young men were sent to forced labor camps.
By 1943, the Hungarian government realized that their German ally was losing the war. Hungary, therefore, tried to break its alliance with Germany. In a fit rage, Hitler ordered his armies into Hungary. In 1944, German troops occupied the entire country, and with the help of Hungarian collaborators, began deporting local Jews to concentration camps.
Lilly was born on September 29,1927 in Mateszalka, Hungary. She was one of eight children. Lilly was the daughter of Sara and Sandor Klein, but she only lived with her mother, and seven siblings, in Debrecen, Hungary, when the Germans invaded Hungary in 1944. At this time, Lilly was a seventeen yearold student. Lilly was able to continue her studies at a local Jewish high school until she was seventeen.
When the Germans invaded Hungary, Lilly and her family was rounded up and herded into a sealedoff ghetto where they were kept for two months. The Germans then began sending the Jewish residents of Debrecen to Auschwitz, a death camp.
Towards the end of June, Lilly was put on a train going to Auschwitz. But the train couldn’t get through, because the tracks had been bombed in allied air rapids. The train was instead diverted to the Strasshofer concentration camp in Austria. There Lilly was forced to work to complete exhaustion. Food was scarce, and those who couldn’t work were murdered. When the camp was finally liberated in April 1945, eighteen yearold Lilly was barely alive.