NEWSMAKER Q&A: Eva Levitt,
Holocaust survivor
Eva Levitt is the president of the Jewish Federation of the Lehigh Valley and a Holocaust survivor. She was born in Czechoslovakia, and in 1942, when she was an infant, her father was taken away. She and her mother went into hiding, and with the help of a Catholic friend moved from place to place every few weeks.
Q. What happened after the war ended?
A. When the war ended, what we did was to go to the train station that went to our town every day, and we waited to see who would get off the train, and one day my father got off.
He was liberated by the Russians and when he was liberated he weighed 78 pounds.
He had been in several concentration camps, the last of which was Auschwitz.
The only other member of my family who came home was my maternal grandmother, she also survived Auschwitz. My other three grandparents were murdered and other members of my family were exterminated.
Q. What was your reaction to the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue last week?
A. My reaction was horror that this kind of thing could happen in today’s world. Horror. And very sad for the people
who were killed. They’re dead, but for their families.
Anti-Semitism has been on the rise here, Rabbi [Michael] Singer said at a Jewish funeral in [Fountain Hill] somebody drove by and started to yell “kill all the Jews,” and that was a couple weeks ago.
Q. Did your parents talk about what it was like to be Jewish in Europe before the war?
A. Yes. My mother and father had a good life. They were able to go to school, my father was able to start a lumber business, we had a nice house. They didn’t really suffer anti-Semitism until the Germans took over, the Nazis took over in the 1930s. Before then, my parents were OK.
Q. What happened after the Nazis took over?
A. All kinds of laws went into effect, the Nuremberg laws. At first you weren’t allowed to teach in schools if you were Jewish. You weren’t allowed to practice law, all kinds of laws were put into effect. The Jews were completely removed from their professions and had to suffer the consequences. Then of course they started deporting Jews: First they put them in ghettos and then they started
sending them to Poland, to concentration camps and eventually they killed, not just Jews, 6 million Jews, but another 5 million Gypsies, mentally challenged people, people who were physically handicapped. They got rid of anyone that they didn’t think was fit to live in a German world.
Q. What’s different about the anti-Semitism we’re seeing now compared to antiSemitism in the 1930s?
A. Now there are some laws against discrimination, which didn’t exist then. People have some ways to help themselves through the law, but if we don’t stand up to it, it’ll get worse. That’s what happened, nobody did anything, so they felt it was OK with everyone to do what they were doing.
Q. What’s the best way to fight anti-Semitism?
A. I think education, No. 1. When people don’t know something or understand something, they are afraid of it. If they know, understand something, it has a much better turnout. That’s why I go to speak in schools about my experience during the Holocaust.