United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Lilly Isaacs (born Livia Klein, 1920-2012) was born in Berehove, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine) to Herman Klein and Bertha Klein (b. 1893). Lilly had a brother, Gabriel (later Gene, born c. 1929), and a sister, Olga (b. 1922). They lived in Berehove where Herman owned a hardware store. Lilly attended school in Prague, but returned home in 1939 after Germany annexed the Sudetenland because of concerns for her safety. In 1944, Lilly and her family were sent to the Berehove ghetto. They did not attempt to leave because they wanted to stay together, but in 1944 they were sent to Auschwitz and were immediately separated. Lilly was sent to Sömmerda, a labor camp outside of Buchenwald, where she was forced to work in a munitions factory until liberation in 1945. While in Sömmerda, Lilly kept a diary she made out of supplies from the factory. After liberation, she returned home and was reunited with her mother, sister, and brother. Herman was killed at Auschwitz. Gabriel decided to leave Berehove, but Bertha and Olga decided to stay. Lilly married George Isaacs (born Gyorgy Iczkovitz in Berehove, Czechoslovakia) in 1945. George survived the war in various forced labor camps in Hungary. Lilly and George lived in DP camps in Austria until they immigrated to the United States. They had a son, Thomas, and a daughter, Debby.
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The Lilly Isaacs diaries and photographs are arranged as a single series.
This collection includes three diaries created and written by Lilly Isaacs while imprisoned in the Sömmerda labor camp from 1944 until after liberation in 1945. During her imprisonment Lilly worked in a munitions factory where she used materials from the factory, such as paint and paper, to make her diaries. In the diaries Lilly writes about being separated from her family at Auschwitz, missing her family, air raids, the development of the war, her experiences in Sömmerda, and liberation. The diaries also include poetry. The collection also includes photographs taken in 1940 of Elizabeth Engel and her two children, Goti and Judith, who perished at Auschwitz, and two photographs of Lilly and her husband, George Isaacs, before the war in Hungary and after the war in a DP camp in Austria.
Lilly Isaacs diaries and photographs