The main entrance and train track at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp (Image: Getty)
In 2019 I received an email from a family in . It came from the son and daughter-in-law of one of three Jewish sisters who lived in the same town as Gita Fuhrmannova (the future wife of Lale Sokolov, whose story I told in my novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz).
They were on the same train to Auschwitz from eastern Slovakia in 1942 as Gita and lived in Block 29 at the concentration camp with Gita. Days later, I flew to and into the lives of the Meller sisters: Cibi, Magda and Livia, and the four generations of family they had created after surviving the horrors of the Holocaust.
Two days before the start of the new year, I had a wonderful video chat with Livia, at 99 the youngest and sole remaining of the sisters.
Eighty years ago, Livia, Cibi and Magda had been in the Auschwitz/Birkenau concentration and death camp since early April 1942, surviving three years of unimaginable brutality.
With the war turning against the Nazis, they had endured weeks of hardship on the so-called “death marches”, as they were transferred from camp to camp by the retreating German forces.
Their freedom came when, together with several other young girls, they took a chance and fled from their captors during one of the forced marches. The date of their escape was April 30, 1945. We know because of the bravery of Magda, the middle Meller sister, who had stolen a notebook and pen from one of the camps. The diary was found by her daughters after she died and after my novel had been published.
It’s an amazing document, written in real time, every day for two weeks by a young girl running from a death march. The original will end up at Yad Vashem – the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem – but I believe it deserves to be published in its own right.
Written in her native Slovakian, she made her first entry on April 30. She wrote: “Retzow [concentration camp] 30 April 1945. It is total evacuation, we are leaving Retzow and heading to another concentration camp which is 45km away.
This three Meller sisters survived Auschwitz, Livia, Cibi and Magda (Image: Livia Meller)
“We are totally exhausted, mentally and physically, and we can’t walk anymore. The camp is overcrowded, with too many prisoners, and another period of starvation and lack of sleep lies ahead of us. It is too much for our nerves.
“Slowly we are moving in small groups, some girls’ groups now walk without SS soldiers as the smarter ones are disappearing into the countryside. Our group is still followed by one SS. He is constantly arguing, screaming at us, even pulling a gun on us, but we are not afraid of him anymore.
“We would like to run away from him, we do not care anymore. We want to be free, not lying face down with a bullet in the head.
“From the airport near the camp we hear multiple explosions, the Germans are trying to destroy everything – the sky is black, and smoke is everywhere. We can hear a loud shelling of bombs.
“The roads are completely congested with soldiers, civilians, prisoners – all together.
“Military tracks, motorbikes, tanks, cars, even horses, young and old. All one big mess. Everyone who can runs away in multiple directions. We are walking between civilians now, our SS finally left us and disappeared into the crowds.
“We are so happy that he is gone. I cannot believe that the SS Soldier who wanted to shoot us is gone. We are finally free!”
Magda’s next diary entry, marked May 8, 1945, was made after some Russian soldiers told the girls the war was over.
“Midnight 8 May 1945: End of War. We cannot imagine what other people are doing outside the place we are sheltering, and this is not an easy thing to write.
“It is the End of War. This is not only the end of the war – it is the end of tears, the end of death, the end of gun fire, the end of air raids. It is the capitulation of Germany.
“It is the end of this massive sadistic German empire. The empire which apparently should not be broken ever by anyone.
“The end of an empire which has enslaved thousands of good and honest people and many nations.
“The great Third Reich is in ruins and her powerful leaders, the Bandits of Europe, will get their punishment.” After that first moving meeting with the Meller sisters, I made several subsequent visits to , spending time with Livia and Magda (Cibi had died in 2015) and the children and grandchildren of all three sisters.
As we spoke and laughed together, their story unfolded, and I recorded it in what would become my third novel – Three Sisters – the conclusion to The Tattooist Of Auschwitz trilogy. I am now proud to call myself a member of the Meller sisters’ extended family.
One of the most heart-breaking moments I had with Livia was when she asked me to come and see something hanging on the wall in her bedroom.
It was a handmade crocheted lace doily made by her mother, rescued from their home in Vranov nad Topl’ou in Slovakia by a neighbour after the family were deported to Auschwitz.
The white lace is now a faded yellow and there is a little damage on one side. Framed, it has pride of place in Livia’s bedroom, and she looks at it, along with the photo of her parents on her bedside table each night.
Livia asked me to sit on her bed, and she sat beside me. Holding my hand, she said to me in a voice barely above a whisper: “This is where I lie down every night, only to fall asleep back in Birkenau.”
Livia also shared with me her memories of one of the last times the sisters were together before Cibi’s death. It was a large family gathering but the sisters found a quiet place to sit, away from their husbands, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Cibi was in a pensive mood and needed the closeness of Magda and Livia.
“We kept our promise to papa, didn’t we?” Cibi said. She was referring to the promise the three girls had made to their father in 1929, the day before he died – to stay together always and never let anyone separate them.
Author Heather Morris, right, with Magda, back, who has since passed away, and Livi, left (Image: Heather Morris)
Livia Meller’s dreams still take her back nightly to the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau (Image: Heather Morris)
“We saved each other’s lives,” Cibi continued. She pushed her sleeve up her left arm revealing her number. Magda and Livia did the same. Their skin now wrinkled with age, but the camp numbers as clear as the day they were stabbed into their skin.
Recalling this time, Livia turned to me, gently rubbing the numbers on her own left arm: “When they put these numbers into our skin, they sealed our promise.
“Some how they gave us the strength to fight for our lives. We might not be much to look at,” Livia giggled, “but once we were the Meller girls.”
I called Livia again the night I was writing this piece. It occurred to me I’d never asked when she and her sisters had truly felt free of persecution. She laughed at my asking a Holocaust survivor that question. “Not since the day I left my home as a 15-year-old girl have I felt free,” she admitted.
She made me think what freedom for any of us really means. I know how I feel, living a privileged life in a safe country, never threatened, no baggage of traumatic history.
For Livia, her family and the families of Cibi and Magda, with a family history of generational trauma, they are all yet to feel and know what I do, real freedom. I do not take it for granted.
Eighty years have passed since Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated.
Jewish child survivors of Auschwitz behind a barbed wire fence in February 1945 (Image: Getty)
Yet for Livia and, I imagine, for so many of the other survivors still with us, there is the daily shadow of all that was endured.
Yes, Livia laughs and cries, plays with her great grandchildren, gives words of wisdom to her grandchildren, insists to her children that she is quite capable of looking after herself. And every night she goes to sleep in Birkenau.
- Heather Morris is the author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Cilka’s Journey, Three Sisters and Sisters Under the Rising Sun. Visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 0203 176 3832. Free UK P&P on online orders over £25. Heather features in The Tattooist’s Son: Journey to Auschwitz, on January 27 on Sky History