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Auschwitz survivor to speak at Salem Holocaust Remembrance
SALEM
Agi Geva has a tattoo that she said “will never be removed.”
Geva is now 80 and travels the country to recount her life after the Nazis invaded Hungary on March 19, 1944, and marked her.
Geva will be the special speaker at the National Holocaust Remembrance Day Service at the Salem Community Center, 1098 N. Ellsworth Ave., starting at 2 p.m. Sunday.
That event will end with six ministers. Each will light a candle that will represent 1 million of the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust.
Geva, her sister Zsuzsanna, who is one year younger than Geva, and her parents, Rozsa and Zoltan Laszlo, were living in Miskolcz, Poland.
Zoltan had been sick and died the day the Nazis invaded.
The members of the family were forced to wear a yellow star designating their faith.
But Geva said the tattoo given by the Nazis “is proof” to those who deny the Holocaust ever happened.
“No, the Holocaust is not a hoax,” she said.
She now volunteers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. She said her travels to give talks takes her to many locations, including a large number of places in Ohio.
“I speak to children and lots and lots of youngsters,” she said.
She added that she tells the story “the way it happened.”
The family was sent to Auschwitz, which was a network of concentration and extermination camps in Poland. However, the family was not involved with the death camps.
Their mother, Rozsa, was able to protect her two children without violence.
Geva said their mother was a strong woman who would talk to them about everyday things.
Rozsa also talked about “what they would be do with their lives after the liberation,” Geva said, adding that Rozsa also spoke of the wonderful life they had and still would have.
Rozsa’s words came true. After the war, Rozsa went to Israel and died at age 98. Her children had five children and 17 great-grandchildren.