Éva Heyman was killed on this day, October 17, 1944, in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. She was born on February 13, 1931, and was only thirteen years old when she died.
Éva was born to secular Jewish parents, Bela and Agí. When she was young, her parents divorced, and her mother married a man named Bela Zslot. In 1944, Éva began keeping a diary where she wrote about her fears, hopes, and dreams.
On March 19, 1944, the Nazis took control of her hometown, Nagyvarad. Soon after, Éva and her friends and family were forced into the newly created Nagyvarad ghetto. Life in the ghetto was terrible. Éva had to share a small room with about twenty people and was not allowed to leave.
Three days before she was sent to Auschwitz, Éva wrote: “Dear diary, I don’t want to die; I want to live even if I have to hide until the end of the war. I would stay in a cellar, on a roof, or in a secret place. Just let me live. I can’t write anymore, dear diary, the tears run from my eyes.”
When Éva arrived at Auschwitz with her grandparents, she was chosen for forced labor. She survived several months because the guards did not know she was only thirteen. While in Auschwitz, she developed an infection on her feet. During a routine selection, Dr. Mengele noticed her wounds, called her a frog, and sent her onto a cart that took her directly to the gas chambers.
Éva’s father and grandparents were killed during the war. Her stepfather and mother survived. Her stepfather wrote one of the first Holocaust memoirs before dying in 1949. Her mother, having lost her husband, parents, and only child, took her own life in 1949 shortly after publishing Éva’s diary.
Remember Éva Heyman.