THE YOUNGEST Holocaust survivor to be part of Schindler's list has spoken of the horrors she saw as a child during the Nazi invasion and how she watched as Jews were pushed from rooftops whilst living in a Polish ghetto.
Eva Lavi was just two-years-old when WWII broke out in the city of Kraków, Poland, and has revealed how she witnessed the execution of Jewish men women and children, how her mother stood up to the infamous SS officer Amon Goeth and how she almost took cyanide given to her by her father to save her family from the gas chambers.
Eva Lavi was just two-years when WWII broke out and was forced to live in the Krakow ghettoCredit: Ariel StratenEva, pictured with her mother Fela, in 1945 at the end of the warCredit: TwitterMillions of Jews were murdered at the hands of the Nazi regime who sought to ethnically cleanse areas of EuropeCredit: Mediadrumimages/TomMarshall[PhotograFix]2020The elderly woman, now 82-year-old, speaking from her home in Givatayim, just outside Tel Aviv, was born to parents Wolf and Felitizia Ratz. Her father selling bathroom accessories while her mother worked from home as a seamstress.
Having been born into a normal family, Eva's childhood would go on to be anything but as her story is one of survival, luck and fighting back against the Nazi regime that killed over six million Jewish people.
Eva would be separated from her father and sent to Płaszów concentration camp, along with her mother before being sent to the notorious Auschwitz camp where they would both be saved by Schindler's list. A story made famous by the Steven Spielberg film of the same name in 1993.
The family survived persecution and fled to Israel to find safety after the war but Eva says she still feels shame and guilt after many others were brutally murdered.
Speaking to the Sun Online, Eva said: "I was two when the war started, when it ended I was eight. Six full years of war!
"Everything is very clear in my mind because it wasnt normal life.
"Mother had golden hands, she could do everything. I was so obedient when I was in the ghetto. They were very nasty from the start, the soldiers.
"When I was three-years-old my other took me for a motivational talk and said everyone wants to kill you; dont believe anyone'."
Eva recalls her time in the Krakow Ghetto, one of five in the country set up to exploit, terrorise and persecute Polish Jews.
Only a child at the time, she retells the haunting memory of Jews being pushed from rooftops by nazi soldiers and how babies were murdered after being thrown against walls.
She said: "I watched them push two Jews from a height. I don't know what happened to those Jews but the image stayed with me forever.
"They were cruel, they would throw babies against the walls to kill and hurt them."
IN HIDING
On Jan 27 1945, the Soviet Red Army liberated Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland.
75 years on, millions around the world remember the horrors that took place there.
Retelling her harrowing story with a certain charm, the mum-of-two recalls the time her mother, also known as Fela, protected her from sadistic soldiers by forcing her to climb out of a window and hold onto to a pipe in -20 degrees temperatures.
Eva, along with her mother and father survived the deadly camps and fled to the safety of Israel after the warCredit: Ariel StratenThe mother and daughter were first held in the Płaszów concentration camp before being sent to AuschwitzThe Płaszów camp was eternalized in Steven Spielbergs film Schindlers List in 1993, with Goeth being played by actor Ralph FiennesCredit: LMK MediaAmon Goeth was tried for war crimes after the end of WWII and later executed near to the site of the former campShe said: "Mother had put me outside, holding on to a drainpipe when a soldier visited. I wasnt scared because I had such confidence in her.
"She opened the door for him, and she said in her perfect German dont shout at me, Im very serious. Ill do want you want but first of all, I have a daughter who is ill who I need to take care of, its better you go out.
"For some reason, the soldiers did what she said."
Eva has also previously spoken about how her father, fearful that his family would be killed in the gas chambers, arrived home with cyanide and a plan to kill his family in a suicide pact.
She said: "knowing the tragic possibility that his beloved wife and child, might be abused in the ghetto, he made the desperate decision to obtain a poison [Cyanide].
"The three of us sat in a small closed room; father poured the poison on a spoon and approached me. He didnt want me to see them die.
"Here, for the first time, my mother, who was a fragile and small woman, always admiring her husband and his decisions, revealed her determination and strength.
"She caught the spoon a and threw it saying, 'no, well not kill ourselves, there is a God and he will decide for us'."
LIFE INSIDE THE CAMP
After the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto in 1943, by SS commander Amon Goeth, Eva and her mother were sent to Płaszów concentration camp in the southern suburb of Kraków.
The camp was masterfully eternalized in Steven Spielbergs film Schindlers List and tells the story of factory owner, Oskar Schindler, who saved thousands of Polish Jews who he employed as slave labour.
Speaking at a UN conference in 2018, she relives how she watched her twin cousins, the same age as her at the time and also imprisoned in Płaszów, brutally shot as they played on a hillside.
She said: "My mother immediately found a hideout for me in the space under the barrack.
"Nobody saw me, but I could see if somebody was coming near but there were things that I should never have seen.
"My twin cousins, whom I loved dearly were caught by the Nazis, brought to Płaszów and shot by soldiers while running up the hill.
"From my hideout I saw how they fell and it has haunted me my entire life.
"We knew what was going on in the world. We knew about Auschwitz, everyone knew.
"If we saw Goeth and his parties we knew very well. But knew there was gas at Auschwitz, but we didnt know it was millions."
She describes the moment she laid eyes on the commander of the camp, Amon Goeth, for the first time.He would later be tried as a war criminal before being executed close to the former site of the barracks.
A Holocaust survivor cries as he pays his respect at the death wall at the memorial site of the former German Nazi death camp Auschwitz during ceremonies to commemorate the 75th anniversaryCredit: AFP or licensorsThe site of the former camp is now open as a museum where people can visit to see the full extent of the Nazi's 'final solution'Credit: AFP or licensorsHundreds visited the former Auschwitz concentration camp today to mark the 75th anniversary of its liberationCredit: AFP or licensorsThe grandmother-of-three said: "He was tall, big. I was down here and he was up there. Very scary.
"He slapped everybody, not every time, but he slapped people."
She talks of an encounter where he instructed her mother to take her to the kindergarten, a place where many children were sent to die.
Untypically, he didnt slap her mother, who said: Thank you very much, Im going with her to the kindergarten."
Her mother was also given the job of cleaning his luxurious home at the camp as she was able to hold conversations with him in German.
She said: "Once, he went to a congress and wasnt at home.
"She went down, she took me along with her as I was very dirty. She cleaned me. She scrubbed me so hard I almost didnt have skin left.
"I was so happy. She turned on the water and cleaned me and I felt like I was like Julia Roberts. It was so good, it felt so good.
"But like in a film the boss got back too early. My mother didnt want to open the door. She said 'I'm sorry you can kill me, I did something I shouldnt do. I brought my daughter to this villa'.
"He almost fainted. He said, 'Where is she?' She said, in the bathroom'.
"I didn't hear as I had dived under the water and was almost dead.
"She opened the door, he saw me. He did nothing. My mother said I'm sorry.
"He said, 'take her immediately down to the main part of the camp'. He was insistent nobody saw me."
'I'M NOT BRAVE'
After the allies won the war and liberated the survivors from the remaining death camps in 1945, Eva and her mother were reunited with her father and the family fled, like many others, to the safety of Israel.
The Nuremberg trials went ahead to prosecute prominent members of the political, military and economic leadership of Nazi Germany who had been behind the shocking persecution, Amon Goeth was amongst them.
The first tribunal tried 22 political and military leaders of the Third Reich, except for Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels, all of whom had committed suicide several months before.
Survivors struggled to return home - having lost many friends, family members and neighbours.
Families of victims sought to get back the wealth and property stolen from them during the Nazi years, and in 1953 the German government made payments to individual Jews and to the Jewish people to acknowledge the crimes committed.
Despite her incredible story of survival, Eva says she was ridden with guilt and kept her story hidden for many years, after marrying her husband Yigel, who sadly passed away five years ago.
She went on to have two children, Orit, 55, and Alon, 62 as well as holding several jobs and being based with the airforce as part of her national service.
She said: "My husband didnt want me to tell my story, 'what? you want that people will pity you?"
I think its important because every place I tell the story, I tell it for just one person. I want people to know the name of Fela Ratz.
"She was special. Im not special.
"I am not brave. Im a big scared person."
Pictured Eva's parents, Wolf and Fela. Her father sold bathroom accessories while her mother worked from home as a seamstressThe film Schindler's List tells the story of factory owner, Oskar Schindler, who saved thousand's of Polish Jews who he employed as slave labourEva spoke at a UN conference back in 2018 after deciding to tell her story for the first timeCredit: Israeli mission to the UNJewish people suffered at the hand of SS soldiers within the camp before being sent to the gas chamber as part of their mass exterminationCredit: Mediadrumimages/TomMarshall[PhotograFix]2020Eva says she still feels guilt and shame for having survived her ordeal when many others were murderedCredit: Ariel StratenI was sent to Auschwitz at 12 where my mother and seven siblings were gassed