Agnes Sassoon

Agnes Sassoon (née Lichtschein; 1933 – 11 January 2020) was a Czechoslovak-born British author, journalist, and Holocaust survivor. Born in Czechoslovakia, she survived internment in Nazi concentration camps as a child during World War II. After the war, she became an advocate for Holocaust education and wrote about her experiences.

Early life

Agnes Lichtschein was born in 1933 in Vylok, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine). Her father, Simon Lichtschein (1895–1969), was a teacher, and her mother, Sarika (1903–1980), was a homemaker.

After leaving the German nursery school, she attended a Jewish-German school in Bratislava where she learned German, Czech, and Hungarian. Due to increasing antisemitism and her father's inability to find stable teaching work, the family faced economic hardship. Sassoon was sent to live with her maternal grandparents in a village to ensure she had enough to eat.

Holocaust In October 1944, at the age of 11, Sassoon was arrested during a raid on her Jewish school in Budapest by members of the Arrow Cross Party, Hungary's Nazi-aligned faction. She was deported to the Dachau concentration camp. She was shot by a guard while marching to Bergen-Belsen in 1945 but was rescued by German and French POWs. She was taken to Bergen-Belsen for treatment and interned there. She then moved between Budapest, Prague, and Bratislava. Her brother was shot in the Danube by Arrow Cross members. She had two sons, Robert and Saul, and worked as a journalist. In 1958, she moved to London with her husband.

Throughout her life, Sassoon visited schools in Germany, Britain, and Israel to share her story and educate young people about the Holocaust. In May 2015, she was one of 133 survivors who participated in commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. Agnes Sassoon died in London on 11 January 2020 at the age of 86.