Lucille Eichengreen

Lucille Eichengreen (née Cecilie Landau; February 1, 1925 – February 7, 2020) was a survivor of the Łódź (Litzmannstadt) Ghetto and the Nazi German concentration camps of Auschwitz, Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen. She moved to the United States in 1946, married, had two sons and worked as an insurance agent. In 1994, she published From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust. She frequently lectured on the Holocaust at libraries, schools and universities in the U.S. and Germany. She took part in a documentary from the University of Giessen on life in the Ghetto, for which she was awarded an honorary doctorate.

Life Born Cecilie Landau in Hamburg, Germany, on February 1, 1925, After returning to Hamburg in the spring of 1939, Benjamin Landau was arrested by the Gestapo on September 1 of that year during the attack on Poland, as a "foreign enemy". He was first brought to a police jail in Fuhlsbüttel, then to Oranienburg concentration camp, and finally to Dachau concentration camp, where he was murdered on December 31, 1940. The family learned of his death only in February 1941, Lucille was among female office workers who suffered sexual abuse from ghetto leader Chaim Rumkowski, of which she recalled: "I felt disgusted and I felt angry [...] but if I would have run away he would have had me deported."

Lucille worked as a secretary for the journalist and writer Oskar Singer. In 1943, she was hit on the left ear during an interrogation by the Nazi police after a denunciation, resulting in permanent deafness in that ear. In August 1944, she was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp, where she was deemed fit to work during the selection process. A few weeks later, when she went through another selection process, concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele sent her to the satellite camp Dessauer Ufer of KZ Neuengamme, where she was forced to perform heavy labour, working in construction and removing detritus from bomb damage. Later, she was assigned to office work, although she was still exposed to mistreatment from supervisors. In March 1945, she was deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Work In the 1990s, Eichengreen began to write her memoirs for publication. Her book From Ashes to Life. My Memories of the Holocaust. was published in the United States in 1994. After first visiting Germany, she lectured in schools, universities and at commemorative events. She worked with the research unit for Holocaust literature at the University of Giessen on the chronicles of the Łódź ghetto, a text which gives an account of life in the ghetto. For her involvement, she was awarded an honorary doctorate in the field of language, culture and literature from the university in May 2007.

During a 2009 exhibition in Hamburg with the title In den Tod geschickt. Die Deportation von Juden, Roma und Sinti aus Hamburg 1940 bis 1945 (Sent to Death: The Deportation of Jews, Roma and Sinti from Hamburg, 1940 to 1945), she was awarded the Hamburger Ehrendenkmünze in Gold (Hamburg gold medal of honour) by mayor Ole von Beust. In 2015, a commemorative volume (Festschrift) honoring her work was published.