Prominent Hungarian Holocaust survivor Eva Fahidi dies

Hungarian Auschwitz survivor Eva Fahidi — active in speaking out against the Holocaust, as well as known for her dance performances at the age of 90 — dies at age 97, according to the Buchenwald memorial foundation.

“It is with great sadness that we learned this morning that Eva Fahidi-Pusztai, survivor of the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps and committed fighter for democracy and human rights, died in Budapest,” the Memorial Foundation Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora says in a statement. “We will sorely miss her wisdom and warmth.”

Fahidi was an 18-year-old schoolgirl when she was put on a train and deported from Debrecen in eastern Hungary to Auschwitz — one of nearly 440,000 Hungarian Jews sent to death camps between May and July in 1944. Forty-nine of her relatives perished in the Holocaust, including her parents and 11-year-old sister. She last saw her mother and younger sibling at a sorting ramp after arriving at Birkenau.

After the camp’s liberation, it took Fahidi nearly six decades before she was ready to open up about her trauma.

A 2003 visit to the camp exactly 59 years after her first journey there prompted her to write her memoir.