A woman appeared, coming down the entrance stairs; she had short, shoulder-length blonde hair that was perfectly styled, wore a colorful satin blouse, and had delicately applied makeup. Before any of us could ask her anything, she sat down, looked at us, and said
“Okay, I’ll tell you my story.”
We might have felt ready, but there was definitely someone even more ready than us.
Her name was Lillian Feintuch, and without waiting for a question she began to tell us her story. Lillian was born in Balmazuvvaros, Hungary., in 1934 as the youngest girl in a family of four children. Her father worked in a factory and she remembers him as a gentle and loving man. Their home had no running water or electricity, but in the couple minutes she talked about what life was like before everything fell apart.
“Life was very good,” she said.
“Everyone got along. It didn’t matter if you were Christian, Jewish, or whatever.”
Lillian’s world when she was 6 years old consisted of her loving parents, her siblings and living in a town where a small difference between people would soon be the reason that determined whether someone was allowed to live or not.
Then one day, two men knocked on the door. Backup everything, they told the family, who quickly gathered their most basic needs and left for the ghetto, where her dad was soon taken to a labor camp- leaving Lillian and her family without knowing if they would ever see him again. Eventually, they had to move to another ghetto, but this time there was no roof and very little space.
Even in that situation, Lillian’s mother had found reasons to be grateful. One day in the ghetto, she stood for a moment while she noticed a little girl who cried desperately. After a pause, she turned to Lillian and said gratefully that her daughter had never behaved that way at that age. Even when all they had was hunger, uncertainty and many reasons to complain, Lillian remembers her mother being grateful for the simple things they had, like the fact that she was a well behaved girl.
The Nazis announced that all families with 4 or more children had to pack their personal belongings and board into some cattle cars. As if by coincidence, Lillian’s family qualified for that category. One of his brothers protested, if other families that qualified were staying behind, why did they have to go?
Their mother refused to resist the order, she alleged that God had something planned out for them and she wasn’t going to defy that plan, she would simply follow the path that was being traced for them-so they packed again…
Then Lillian and her family were pushed into the cattle cars– no windows, no space, and of course- with no idea where they were headed.
Nearly 12 days later, the train that carried them stopped abruptly. The tracks they were going to had been bombed, making it impossible for the train to continue their way. Turns out that the destination they were supposed to be headed to was Auswitchz, and if they made it there, they were going to be killed. However the train turned back towards Austria.
When they got to Austria, Lillian and her family were not allowed to stay in the barracks so they stayed outdoors. It was Friday and rain was pouring heavily. Her mom managed to cover her and her siblings with the couple coats they brought when they were taken. The next morning, Lillian’s mother laid the soaked coats under the sun to dry.
Later that afternoon, her brothers went missing, so Lillian and her mother began to walk around the camp looking for them in the night.
Not long after they began searching, a Nazi officer noticed them and demanded,
“What are you doing walking around here?”
Before Lillian could understand what was happening, the officer raised his gun and put it against her forehead, pressing it directly between her eyebrows. Then he moved the gun to her mothers head and warned that if he were to ever see them walking around again, he would kill Lillian first so her mother would get to see it before he killed her too.
For years, Lillian could still feel the gun pressed in her forehead. More than ninety years after this event, sitting in front of us, Lillian raised her hand and pointed exactly the space between her eyebrows as she remembered everything.The coldness of the metal gun did not disappear the moment the officer lowered it, but when Lillian speaks about that moment now, the gun is not the only thing she remember. Sometimes , she said that she would feel a thick hand resting over the place the gun would usually feel. This hand would feel warm and calming, whenever it appeared, the gun disappeared.
It was the hand of God, she believed.
Eventually her brothers were found and the four siblings with their mom remained together. However, there was no time to recover before they were moved again.
In Vienna, Lillian and her family were taken to camp in District 21, where thirty two people were put in a single room and were not allowed to step out the building. Then one day the sirens began, they had to evacuate. Everyone ran towards the exit, and as Lillian’s mother urged to run, Lillian had to do something first.
“Mom, I gotta get my shoes” But there was no time for shoes, they had to run. Her mother did not let her grab the shoes and sprinted with her as quickly as they could from the building.
Lillian ran barefooted some meters outside the building when suddenly, it collapsed. Beneath all the debris, where Lillian’s shoes. Beneath the rubble was everything they left behind again, but once again, Lillian was safe.
Some time later, with nowhere to leave their daughter. Lillian’s mother had to take lLillian align with her to work. An Austrian woman noticed that the little girl had no shoes and told her mother that children are not supposed to be there, and even less in that state. However, instead of sending her away, the woman offered to take Lillian home.
The woman gave her food, shoes and a book. However, when it came to food, Lillian could not give herself to receiving it because somewhere nearby, her brothers stood by in hunger, craving for food. So she saved the food and at the end of the day brought it back to share it with them.
The war, the survival, and everything kept on going with more uncertainty each day. Lillian and her family were forced to go on a death march, in which they were starving and exhausted. They were barely recognizable because the hunger had transformed them into what Lillian described as “skeletons”.
Somewhere along the march, Lillian’s mother got sick. The Naziguards had lost their attention on the Jewish, and had stepped in the front of the march, and with the little chance they had, Lillian and her family rushed to escape towards a nearby housefarm.
They knocked on some door, hoping for help. The farmer rapidly recognized they were Jewish, and Luckily he led them to his stable instead of turning them away. The stable was filled with horses, cows and straw that was spread across the floor.
“Its like a four-star hotel,” said Little Lillian with a smile.
Compared to the ghettos, the night sleeping outdoors, the camps, and all those days that felt endless. Lillian had found an incomparable comfort in that stable. That night they slept in straw, and by the next morning, Lillian’s mother had woken up in a better condition. Lillian called this moment, another one of the many miracles that God led along her journey.
Before they could leave, the farmer invited them inside his home and offered them bread, milk, and butter. After so many times of hunger, having a meal like this had almost become something unimaginable.
“I thought we were already in heaven,” She recalled.
As they continued walking, Lillian had found herself in one of the most incredible surroundings: bushes, trees, the sky. For months, all she was surrounded by was concrete buildings, crowded barracks and dirty outdoors. And once again, the world looked beautiful again…for a moment.
Then, she saw him.
Deep in the valley where they stood, a Nazi soldier appeared in the distance. Upon spotting them, he began running toward them at full speed. The family knew there was no point in running, as he was an armed man, and perhaps the goodness of the past few hours had merely been a fleeting moment before the end. As the soldier drew closer, Lillian realized he was not running toward her family, but towards her.
As soon as Lillian began to feel death drawing ever closer, she started to tremble and pray, asking God for forgiveness for her sins and thanking Him for keeping her alive for so long; she was essentially preparing herself for death. The seconds ticked by, feeling like an eternity, and the only thing on Lillian’s mind was why the guard hadn’t drawn his weapon yet.
“Pull that gun and get. it. over.” She thought.
As the soldier drew near, his face became visible. And as he came closer and closer, tears began to stream down his face, which looked increasingly sorrowful. Upon reaching her, he fell to his knees and began to sob.
Lillian and her family were left uneasy, unable to understand what was happening. Then, the soldier explained that he had mistaken Lillian for his daughter- who had been missing for two years, because she bore a strong resemblance to her from a distance; however, upon getting closer, he realized it was not her. He had been forced into military service against his will.
Seeing the family in such a desperate state, he felt compassion and asked where they were headed. When they told him, he warned them that they would be killed if they continued on that path. So instead, he pointed out a house high up on a mountain where there was a family that might let them in and keep them safe.
One day at the mountain house, one of Lillian’s brothers disappeared for several hours in the afternoon. Terrified of what might have happened, Lillian, her mother, and the rest of her siblings clung to the hope that he was still alive. After a few hours, they saw a shadowy figure approaching them in the distance. As it drew closer, they realized it was Michael, their brother… he was alive.
Later, Michael told them that he had gone for a walk in the mountains when he saw a train pass by, filled with Jews being taken away by Nazis. The Jews had seen Michael and recognized him, shouting his name for help. They were afraid the Nazis would search for him because they had attracted their attention, revealing that there was a Jew among them. Fortunately, Michael had found a bush where he fit perfectly and had to hide for hours so they wouldn’t find him.
Lillian believed God wanted them alive, because every time a situation arose where any of the Feintuch family came close to death, something happened that allowed them to live. Lucky among thousands who hadn’t had that, Lillian thought. But it remained to be seen if God would perform one of his other miracles, knowing if their father would still be alive when all this was over.
On May 7, 1945, word spread that they were finally free from the German Nazi regime following its surrender. After a year of misery, it was finally over.
Upon returning to Hungary, they were reunited with the missing piece of their family: her father was still alive. After everything that had transpired, her father, her three siblings, her mother, and she herself had all survived. Yet, unexpectedly, this would not be the last miracle Lillian experienced. When they returned to Hungary, everything was destroyed; the place was unrecognizable.
One day, while they were staying in what had once been their home, a stranger knocked loudly on the door- much like the day two men had ordered them to gather their belongings. The fear of opening the door grew with every passing moment. When they finally opened it, the man told the family there was no future for them in Hungary and urged them to flee to a shelter in Budapest.
Years later, Lillian would discuss with a friend how that man had been nothing less than an angel sent from heaven to offer them one final act of help.
Sitting across from us, Lillian told her story as someone who wasn’t a prisoner of her past, but as someone who recognized the importance of sharing it in order to move forward. At times, her eyes filled with tears as she recalled each of those moments, but the tears didn’t linger long before she regained the same strength she had 90 years ago to tell the rest of her story.
“It was only one year of my life,” she said. “I’m not going to let it rob me of my peace because it doesn’t define me.”
When Lillian looked back and told us each part of her story, I noticed that she didn’t measure her story by the moments when she came close to death, but by each moment that gave her another reason to live.
“Okay, I’ll tell you my story.” She Said
Perhaps more than 80 years later, this is why she still comes to every room with a smile on her face, sitting down before anyone asks a question, ready to tell her story- recognizing that there was more to her experience and to life than all those months of misery.
Before leaving, I asked my one and final question: “Despite everything bad you went through that year, what was one good thing you took away from it? Something you learned?”
“Be kind,” Lillian replied. “Sometimes it’s hard, but no one is happy when they live stressed out—be kind,” she continued. “I learned not to discriminate against anyone, because we are all the same; amidst so many bad people, you should be good.”
That phrase might sound ordinary or repetitive, but coming from someone who experienced one of the cruelest events in human history, and, at the same time, witnessed some of the quietest acts of compassion, it felt like this lesson was about much more than just being kind.
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