Right away I was hooked. Dov Forman is Lily's great grandson. He wants to know Lily's story. And when she shows him a note that she received from a soldier on the day that Lily was liberated, Dov is determined to use social media to track down the GI who gave Lily the note.
Lily's story about her happy childhood in Hungary and then how life changes when Hitler invades Hungary. The story of her life in concentration camps is well told. Her father had recently died of natural causes, her older brother has been conscripted and she, her mother and four siblings are sent to Auschwitz. Her mother and two youngest siblings are immediately selected for death. Lily is determined to honor the promise she made to her father to keep her remaining two sisters safe. She describes the harsh realities of Auschwitz as well as her acts of defiance that give her the strength to keep going. She also makes herself a promise. That after the war, she is going to tell her story. She wants the world to know what has happened.
The war ends and after being in a refugee camp in Switzerland, Lily and her sisters move to Mandatory Palestine, what will shortly become Israel. Life goes on. Lily falls in love and gets married. They have children. And she realizes that no one really wants to hear about what happened during the war. They are busy trying to build new lives... and forget.
It wasn't until many years later, in London, that Lily has the opportunity to honor the promise she made to herself in 1944. She starts talking about her experiences during the Holocaust. And she doesn't stop.
During the pandemic, during the many lockdowns in London, Dov gives Lily a new outlook for speaking out to the world. TikTok. Lily becomes a TikTok sensation. Her stories are now going to a younger generation. That part of the story was what made this the most interesting and the most hopeful. I'd highly recommend this new memoir.
After I finished the memoir, I looked for Lily online and before I found some of her TikTok posts, I found this article, 98-year-old Holocaust survivor reaches younger generations on TikTok: "I will tell my story". I spent the next hour watching the documentary that was imbedded in the article. The survivors that are still around to tell their stories are such a blessing. Only then did I go on to look at some of her posts on TikTok. What a treasure she is and she does seem to make a connection with younger people.
Sadly, even after years of saying "Never again," it seems like too many are looking the other way. We must change the refrain to "Never forget." Lily and her fellow survivors, for as long as they live, will keep the story alive for us.
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