She is 98 years old and survived Auschwitz: today she tells young people on TikTok about horrors of the Holocaust
Social networks can be an important tool for conveying important and less important messages - it all really lies in the use made of them. Many young people today seem to find it fulfilling to share short, light videos on TikTok, for example, whether they are dancing or weird "challenges" that don't start from any intelligent foundations. And if such videos go viral, then why not grab everyone's attention with important messages? It is with this assumption that the great-grandson of an Auschwitz survivor opened a TikTok channel for her elderly relative, proposing to tell about about her terrible experience she had lived through during those times. The Holocaust was a very black page in world history and its survivors are now slowly passing on and disappearing. Their history, however, must never be forgotten.
via CBS News
Lily Ebert is 98 years old and is one of the few survivors of Auschwitz still alive and able to talk about those terrible times. The more we get on in years, the more we risk forgetting our past, so it is therefore important to give voice to these very important witnesses. The woman's great-grandson, Dov Forman, suggested that Lily use TikTok as a stage to be able to capture the attention of younger ones with her experiences. Lily's account is now followed by over a million users and is a great result considering that there are still those who continue to deny that the Holocaust even happened.
"I wasn't really sure if I was going to stay alive. It's a miracle that I am here. But I have promised myself, for as long as I live, and whatever I do in life, one thing: I will tell my story." said the elderly woman. But what is Lily's story?
Lily was deported to Auschwitz when she was 20 and was immediately separated from her mother, brother and one of her sisters. She had no idea what was about to happen: her relatives were sent to the gas chambers that same afternoon. "I was in Auschwitz for four months," said Lily, "Four months in a death camp. People used to say that four months isn't that long, but I'll tell you something... four months was far too long." The woman added in another video that "in Auschwitz you were not afraid of death - you were afraid of living".
The woman also talked about the day she was freed from the camp and what the first thing she did was when she got out of that nightmare. Lilly said she immediately fell asleep: "I lay down on the ground and fell asleep. I'm sure other people went to eat something because we were very hungry, but I was so tired because we could never sleep in the camp, that I went immediately to sleep ".
In addition, the memory of other people are also intertwined with Lily's story: an American soldier, whom the young woman met after the liberation of Auschwitz, wrote her a message on a German banknote. The message simply said 'Good life, and good luck in your future'. The woman's great-grandson decided to track down that soldier, or at least his relatives, from that banknote. The young man published the photo of the banknote and received about 8,000 messages within a day. Among the messages received was the one he was looking for: the soldier's name was Hyman Shulman, of Brooklyn, and had died in 2013. However, his son Jason recognized his father's name written in Hebrew characters. Obviously, the man was shocked and after all the time that had passed, he couldn't believe it. Lily and Jason were able to talk via a very emotional video call on Zoom.
Do you think channels like TikTok can also be used to talk about serious topics and stories? Tell us yours!
