Als wir die Maikäfer waren

When little Eva appears on her father's back at the famous Gellert Baths in Budapest, the elderly ladies take cover. For her father leaps into the water from the edge of the pool, splashing everywhere. Eva always has to come along. She learns to swim there. Who could have guessed that this would later save her life? For Eva is twelve when she is thrown back into the water, this time into the icy cold Danube, tied with a rope to two other Jewish girls. Hungarian Nazis, the Arrow Cross, do this to her. The stories in this book tell of people who survived the Holocaust and must continue to live their second lives with their dead and their guilt, with their grief and their anger. They are based on the memories of the people Christoph Heubner had the privilege of meeting during his work as Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee. People who still hope that their memories will be useful to the world and serve as a warning. Those who are deeply troubled yet have not stopped believing that a world without hate and without anti-Semitism is possible.