Holocaust Survivor With LI Roots Speaks To German Parliament

ROCKVILLE CENTRE, NY—Thursday, January 27 is Holocaust Remembrance Day, an annual commemoration of the Allied liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp, 77 years ago.

One woman who spent part of her childhood on Long Island took to the world stage with a solemn message. Inge Auerbacher, 87, was invited to speak before the German Bundestag, the country's parliament, an honor previously extended to other humanitarian leaders like Elie Wiesel on the anniversary day.

Auerbacher, a chemist and an author, has spent much of her life telling her story of surviving the Holocaust. On Tuesday, she told the German parliament that “I have lived in New York for 75 years, but I still remember well the terrible time of horror and hatred.”

“Unfortunately, this cancer has reawakened and hatred of Jews is commonplace again in many countries in the world, including Germany.”

According to the Times of Israel, Auerbacher was born in Germany and in 1941, was deported at the age of seven with her parents to the Theresienstadt ghetto-concentration camp.

She was the youngest in the transport of over a thousand people, she remembered.

After surviving life in the camp, she and her parents emigrated to Rockville Centre to join relatives.

"We went to my aunt and uncle in Rockville Centre, Long Island, and my mother then got a job as a cook and maid and my father worked as a butler,” she explained, adding that she spent four years recovering from tuberculosis she contracted in the concentration camp.

Auerbacher now lives in Queens and told the Times of Israel that even with the risk of COVID-19, the chance to address such an important audience was worth it.

"This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“I’m not going to scream, ‘You murderers,’ which some are. Instead, I will deliver my message in German and say that hatred against a people is terrible and that we are born as brothers and sisters and should live together.”

The pandemic forced many ceremonies for Holocaust Remembrance Day to go virtual, but a small ceremony was held at the site of former Auschwitz death camp, where 1.1 million perished. Around 6 million European Jews, and others, were killed by the Nazis.

According to the Associated Press, 1.5 million were children.

“I will speak from my heart, point to the audience and say there should be no more antisemitism in Germany,” Auerbacher said.

“I don’t want antisemitism and hatred against anybody. I come as a peacemaker.”