At a meeting of the presidium of the International Auschwitz Committee in Berlin today, the Slovakian-born German-Jewish paediatrician, psychotherapist and Auschwitz survivor Dr Eva Umlauf was elected as the new President of the International Auschwitz Committee. She succeeds the Polish-Jewish journalist and Auschwitz survivor Marian Turski, who died in Warsaw on 18 February.

Eva Umlauf is one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz. She was born into a Jewish family in a Slovakian labour camp in 1942. At the end of October 1944 she was deported to Auschwitz together with her mother, who was four months pregnant, and her father. Their transport train arrived in Auschwitz on 2 November 1944. Eva Umlauf owed her life to the fact that the gassings in Auschwitz had been stopped only a couple of days before her transport arrived. The Red Army was rapidly approaching, and the SS was hurriedly trying to destroy evidence of their crimes.

Nevertheless, two-year-old Eva and her parents still went through the camp’s admission procedure. Her tiny arm was tattooed with the number A26959. Her father was shot during a death march, but Eva and her pregnant mother remained in the camp and survived. Her sister was born in Auschwitz in April 1945 after the camp was liberated at the end of January. It was months later before the health of the mother and her two daughters had improved enough for them to leave Auschwitz and return to Slovakia. There they learnt that almost their entire extended family had been murdered during the Holocaust. Today, Eva Umlauf lives in Munich, where she practices as a paediatrician and psychotherapist. She also travels to cities and communities throughout Germany to talk to young people, tell them her story and sensitise them to the dangers that threaten democracy today.