Lucille Eichengreen (1925–2020)

Lucille Eichengreen was born Cecelia Landau in Hamburg, Germany, the eldest of two daughters of a Polish Jewish family. Her father Benjamin Landau was a wine merchant, and she had a comfortable childhood until the age of eight, when the Nazi regime came to power in 1933. She and her family were constantly under threat of persecution by the Nazis, as well as insults and assaults by the German population. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939 at the start of World War II, Benjamin Landau was arrested and deported to Poland as an enemy alien. After returning to Hamburg, he was arrested and murdered at Dachau concentration camp. At age 16, Lucille, along with her mother Sala and sister Karin, was deported to the Łódź Ghetto, where Sala starved to death in 1942. Karin was separated from her at age 11, deported to Chełmno extermination camp, and murdered. Lucille worked as a secretary until 1943, when she was deported to the death camp at Auschwitz. From there she was sent to the satellite camp Dessauer Ufer of KZ Neuengamme, where she was forced to heavy labor. In March 1945, ahead of the advancing Red Army, she and other prisoners were sent to Bergen-Belsen. She survived to be liberated by British troops in April, and spent a few months in the displaced persons camp working as a translator for the British. She helped identify 42 members of the SS, leading to their arrest and trial. After receiving death threats for her efforts, in 1946 she emigrated to the USA. There she married Dan Eichengreen, also from Hamburg, with whom she had two sons. In 1994, she published her memoir From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust. She began speaking publicly on the Holocaust at schools, universities and at commemorative events. She also worked with the research unit for Holocaust literature at the Justus-Liebig-University on the history of the Łódź Ghetto.