Records Relating to Elisabeth Mann (Erszebet Mo... | Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust
Collection of Elisabeth Mann,s artworks. This collection comprising sketches of pencil on paper and one portrait of oil on paper.
Elisabeth Mann after liberation was admitted to Sweden where she worked at a school. She reflectedd on wartime experience by portraying the former prisoners of Auschwitz concentration camp and on her own incarceration in the Braunschweig concentration camp in Germany.
In April 1944, Elisabeth and her family were forced to move into the ghetto. Not long after, the family was deported. They took only what they could carry to the railroad station and were loaded into cattle cars. After a hellish five day journey, they arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The family tried to stay together, but the men were ordered into one line and the women and children were ordered into another. Elisabeth’s younger brother, Laci, had just turned 13 and by Jewish law was now a man. He asked Elisabeth which line he ought to join. Because he was very ill, Elisabeth told him to stay with their mother, not knowing that this decision would send him directly to the gas chamber with their parents.
Elisabeth got strength and hope through memories of home and her nine “camp sisters,” who would literally support each other during roll calls. She also managed to meet briefly with her sister who had disappeared while in Auschwitz. In October 1944, she was sent to Bergen-Belsen before being sent on a death march. She was liberated in Denmark on May 2, 1945.
She spent several years in Sweden, where she met her husband, before immigrating to the US in 1955. They are the proud parents of two daughters and a son. In time, Elisabeth learned that the rest of her family had died, but she never lost touch with her camp sisters. They saved her life and became her family. Today she encourages everyone to believe in love and hope, saying, “Human beings cannot give up hope. As long as you have your life, and hope, you can do anything.”
