Lily Ebert, 100-year-old Auschwitz survivor, celebrates becoming great-great-grandmother and declares: ‘Nazis didn’t win’

A 100-year-old Auschwitz survivor has emotionally declared the Nazis ‘didn’t win’ as she celebrates becoming a great-great-grandmother.

Recognized for her services to Holocaust education and receiving an MBE in the New Year Honors list last year, Lily Ebert has gone from ‘near-death in Auschwitz to creating five generations of Jewish life’.

Her great-grandson, 20-year-old Dov Forman, went to X, formerly known as Twitterto share an emotional photo of Lily with her daughters and grandchildren.

The healthy snaps, which have already racked up over 20,000 likes, showed Lily beaming as she held her newborn great-great-grandchild.

The caption read: ‘This week my great-grandmother, Lily Ebert, a 100-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, became a great-great-grandmother.

”I never expected to survive the Holocaust. Now I have five beautiful generations. The Nazis did not win!” From near death in Auschwitz to five generations of Jewish life.’

Many rushed to the comments to congratulate Lily on the very special family moment.

One person said: ‘Wonderful. Congratulations to Lily, to her little great-great-granddaughter and to the proud parents. The joy on her face is uplifting.

Another said: ‘What an uplifting story! Blessings to the remarkable Lily Ebert and all generations of her family.’

Another wrote: ‘Actual tears watching this. Please tell your great grandmother that her smile gives us hope. Shabbat shalom.’

A fourth wrote: ‘This is wonderful!!! the most beautiful story I have read in the last months. It brings hope, and hope is what we need most in these dark hours. Mazal Tov to Grandma Lily, may God grant her many more years of good health ve ahava.’

Lily, who became a founding member of the UK’s Holocaust Survivor Centre, and her grandson have amassed billions of views on TikTok in an effort to educate the younger generation about the Holocaust.

After receiving her MBE at Windsor Castle, she said: ‘Not so long ago there were people who wanted to kill me for my religion and today I received this honour. Words cannot explain how much this means to me.

‘I promised myself that if I survived I would tell the whole world what had happened to us in Auschwitz – that there were people who were killed for no other reason than their faith, because we were considered not to be worthy of life.’

She said she has always tried to be a positive force in the world and encourage others to ‘appreciate our differences and learn from each other and be kind to everyone.

“Something terrible like this must never, ever happen again. As long as I am alive, I will teach the world to be tolerant,’ she added.

She also spoke about the importance of educating people through social media, especially TikTok.

“I think (educating people through TikTok) is very important because the young people really want to learn and they should learn,” she said. ‘I don’t just speak what I learn – I went through it.’

Lily was 20 years old when she and her family were taken to Auschwitz on one of the last trains transporting Hungarian Jews to the camp in 1944, spending months in Birkenau before being transported to Altenburg, a sub-camp of Buchenwald.

Her parents and some of her siblings were sentenced to death in the gas chamber after meeting the infamous Josef Mengele, infamous for his experiments on them in the camp, while the remaining family members were put to work.

After being liberated from Auschwitz 78 years ago, Mrs Ebert spent a year in Switzerland before moving in 1946 to Israel, then under British rule in Palestine.

She migrated to Britain in 1967 with her husband, Samuel, and began a life of educating the world about the horrors of the Holocaust.

Now based in North London, Mrs Ebert is a mother of three, grandmother of 10 and became a great-grandmother for the 36th time in 2022.

The king was writing a foreword to his book, Lily’s Promise, when Ms Ebert spoke of her appreciation for the monarch, who she has met on a number of occasions, including at one of his Christmas parties.

“He’s a very special person,” Ms. Ebert said of Charles. ‘It must be a very difficult job and he does it with such love and understanding that I thank him very much. I never thought I’d get the chance to thank him in person.’

She added that the news of her MBE arrived by letter and that the recognition is ‘very special’.

‘People are still here in this world and (show) their respect – what we (should) try to have for the whole society.’

Forman told the PA news agency it was ‘humbling’ to see his grandmother made an MBE.

‘It is so humbling to be here today with four generations of my great grandmother’s family as she accepted her MBE.

‘It was very moving to see the tears roll down her face as she told the King that she never expected to survive the Holocaust, let alone receive an honor from the King of England.’

He added that the following they have gained on TikTok is partly to ‘take a torch and pass it on to others’.

“When you listen to a Holocaust survivor, when you listen to a witness, you become a witness,” Mr Forman told the PA. ‘And then every single person who hears our story on TiKTok… they learn the lessons of the past.

So I am incredibly honored and humbled to have helped my great grandmother go viral and given her a platform and every single day we get thousands of comments from all over the world, from countries even where they are banned from learning and teaching about holocaust.’

Forman spoke about his time visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial site for the first time on January 19.

“I really tried to imagine that my great-grandmother was there, in the same place that I was standing then… I was unable to understand how she survived such an experience,” he said.

‘We must not hesitate to place responsibility on the perpetrators who had something to do with enabling the horrors that befell those like my great-grandmother… That said, this is not the biggest risk we face today .

“Our main concern concerns the third category of ordinary people within the framework of those involved in the Holocaust: the bystanders.

‘We cannot allow ourselves to become bystanders – my work with my great grandmother and this journey (Auschwitz) has ingrained in me that it is up to us, those of the newer generations, my generation, to make sure that we do that. do not stand still as long as there is hatred in this world.’