Testimony of Lily (Hershkovitz) Shalev, born in Kalna, Czechoslovakia, 1924, regarding her experiences in Kalna, Budapest, the Levice Ghetto, Auschwitz-Birkenau and other places

Testimony of Lily (Hershkovitz) Shalev, born in Kalna, Czechoslovakia, 1924, regarding her experiences in Kalna, Budapest, the Levice Ghetto, Auschwitz-Birkenau and other places Life before the war; Orthodox religious family. Re-annexation to Hungary; displays of antisemitism, 1939; closure of her father's businesses; deportation of her father to forced labor; appeal to the Jews' supervisor to release her father; receives knowledge from her uncles about the deportation of the Jews to the East; her father hides crates with their belongings in the ground and in the attic, 1942; escape to Budapest; life in Budapest with her siblings; displays of antisemitism, 1943; escape back to her parents in Kalna; life in Kalna; robbery of their property by the village's mayor, 1944; German occupation, 1944; deportation to the Levice Ghetto with Jews from the area; Levice Ghetto life; stripping of women naked, and search for valuables on their bodies; deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau; clapping of hands by local residents during the deportation; camp life including her mother's request to remain with her daughter; flogging of her mother; transfer to Lippstadt, August 1944; camp life; labor as a shift manager of lathes; fault on a machine and charged with implementation of sabotage; air-raids on the camp; death march; liberation by the US Army in the Minden area, 01 April 1945. Return to Levice; life in Levice; chance meeting with a female commander from Auschwitz, 1947; joins the Haganah organization; military training; aliya to Israel; enlists in the IDF, January 1949.