‘The Nazis Did Not Win!’: 100-Year-Old Auschwitz Survivor Becomes Great-Great-Grandmother

Shiryn Ghermezian

Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert. Photo: Matti Zoman

Lily Ebert, an author and a survivor of the Nazis’ Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, became a great-great-grandmother this week at the age of 100.

Ebert’s great-grandson, Dov Forman, announced on X/Twitter the birth of a baby boy in the family, which he said marks “five generations of Jewish life” for Ebert. He also posted photos of Ebert holding her new great-great-grandchild.

“I never expected to survive the Holocaust. Now I have five beautiful generations,” said Ebert, who turned 100 on Dec. 29. “The Nazis did not win!”

Ebert is a native of Bonyhád, Hungary, and now lives in London. In 2020, Ebert began posting videos on TikTok, with help from Forman, to teach social media users about the Holocaust. Her account, which her great-grandson helps run, currently has 2 million followers.

In 2022, Forman and Ebert co-wrote a memoir about her life titled Lily’s Promise and it became a New York Times bestseller. The memoir includes a foreword by King Charles, who recognized Ebert as a Member of the Order of the British Empire last year for her contributions to Holocaust education.

Ebert was 20 when she was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp with her mother Nina, one of her brothers, Bela, and three sisters — Berta, Renee, and Piri. Upon their arrival, Ebert’s mother, brother, and sister Berta were immediately sent to the gas chambers and killed. Ebert and her remaining sisters were later transported to a munitions factory near Leipzig, Germany, where they worked until they were liberated by Allied forces in 1945. The sisters reunited with their eldest brother, who had also survived the Holocaust, in 1953 and together the siblings relocated to Israel. Ebert and her husband moved to London with their three children in 1967.