Holocaust Survivor Meets Family Of Soldier Who Saved Her From Death Camp

Lily Ebert was just 14-years-old when she was taken to Auschwitz and she’s never forgotten the kind solider who helped liberate her.

Holocaust survivors, by and large, are no longer present to tell their stories. That’s why it is important to take the time to listen when they are given the chance to do so.

Lily Ebert has a 16-year-old great-grandchild who wanted to learn more about the time that she had spent in Auschwitz. At this time, she decided that she was going to show him a memento that she had been keeping under wraps.

Photo: Twitter/CBS Mornings

As shared by CBS Morning on Twitter, the German banknote that she showed him had “good luck and happiness” and “a start to a new life” written on its edges.

The banknote was given to her by an American soldier. This soldier, who also happened to be Jewish, liberated her from a concentration camp in 1945. The note was special to her for a variety of reasons.

The amount of abuse that Lily experienced in the concentration camp is hard to fathom. It is beyond anything that most of us will ever go through.

Photo: Twitter/CBS Mornings
Photo: Twitter/CBS Mornings

“He was the first person who was kind and wasn’t an enemy,” she said. She was only 14 when she was taken from her family’s home and put to work at the concentration camp, which she refers to as a “factory of death.”

Her brother, her mother, and one of her sisters were killed during the time that she spent there. She and two of her sisters were somehow able to survive. She spent two years imprisoned and happened to be in the midst of a death march with her sisters when American soldiers finally arrived to set her free.

“We were liberated after a few days walking without food, without water, without shoes,” Lily says. “When they liberated us, we wanted only to get in somewhere, sit down, and sleep, and we were so hungry and thirsty. We were still afraid.”

Photo: Twitter/CBS Mornings

The gift from the soldier touched her so deeply in the moment that she hung onto it for the rest of her life.

The great-grandson was so touched by her story, he tracked down the family of the soldier himself. He posted the banknote on Twitter, with a joke about how he would find the family within 24 hours tops. As it turns out, he was 100 percent correct. “It means so much that we can now connect with the family,” Lily shares.

If you would like to see the video for yourself, please take a moment to check it out below:
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