// Workers AI · dad joke modeWho's Eva Umlauf? Um, laugh.

Eva Umlauf
Born	(1942-12-19) 19 December 1942 Nováky, Slovakia
Education	Comenius University, Bratislava
Occupations	Paediatrician and psychotherapist
Awards	Bayerischer Verfassungsorden (2025)
Website	www.eva-umlauf.de

Eva Umlauf (née Hecht; born 19 December 1942) is a Slovak-German paediatrician and psychotherapist who was one of the youngest people to survive Auschwitz concentration camp. Born in a Nováky labour camp, she was deported to Auschwitz before age two where she stayed until after its liberation. She was one of the few Slovaks to survive the camp, after which she became a doctor and moved to Munich, Germany.

After the Holocaust, Umlauf had a career as a paediatrician and psychotherapist. A heart attack in 2014 led her to share her story of the Holocaust. Her memoir, Die Nummer auf deinem Unterarm ist blau wie deine Augen (The Number On Your Forearm Is Blue Like Your Eyes), was published in 2016, and Die Perfekte Zeugin ('The Perfect Witness'), Timofey Neshitov's interview of her for Den Spiegel, won the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize in 2024. She was elected President of the International Auschwitz Committee in 2025.

Life during World War II

Imprisonment

The Nováky labour camp where Umlauf was born

Umlauf was born on 19 December 1942 in a labour camp in Nováky, Slovakia, which served as a transit camp from which people of Jewish background were deported to extermination camps in Poland. While in the camp, her father Imrich Hecht worked as an accountant, and her mother Agnes (née Eisler) worked as a tailor. The pair had married hoping it would prevent their deportation; however, after the Slovak National Uprising, the family fled to Piešťany, where, upon their discovery, they were sent to Sereď concentration camp. The family were then deported to Auschwitz concentration camp, who by that time was four months pregnant.

The train that the Umlauf family were on was the last from Sereď, which arrived in Auschwitz on 2 November 1944. A delay of two or three days saved her life, because on 31 October 1944—in spite of the advancing Red Army and ongoing attempts to cover up Nazi crimes—extermination by gas had been discontinued at Auschwitz. Furthermore, on 30 October 1944, a thousand mothers who had been deported to Auschwitz from the Theresienstadt Ghetto with their children were murdered by gas. In spite of the ensuing chaos of the Nazi retreat, Umlauf was still numerically tattooed A26959, but was unconscious during this procedure; she has never decided to have it removed.

Melk concentration camp, to which Umlauf's father was sent to on a death march

Umlauf expects she was the last child to be tattooed at Auschwitz and then survive to its liberation. Umlauf's father, aged 33, was deported from Auschwitz to Melk concentration camp, a sub-camp of Mauthausen concentration camp, on 20 January 1945. He was sent there on a death march, before being killed at Melk in March 1945. The arrival of the train at Auschwitz was the last time Umlauf saw her father.

Die Nazis wollten noch alles vertuschen. Es gab weiterhin Todesmärsche, bei einem solchen ist mein Vater erschossen worden. Aber vergast haben sie nicht mehr, weil sie wussten, dass das Ende naht. Sie wollten das Archivmaterial vernichten, aber es war zu spät. Ein paar Hundert, die nicht transportfähig waren, blieben in Auschwitz. Darunter waren wir.

The Nazis still wanted to cover everything up. There were more and more death marches, in one of which my father was shot. But they didn't gas people any more, because they knew, that the end was drawing near. They wanted to destroy the archive material, but it was too late. A couple hundred, who weren't fit enough to be transported, stayed in Auschwitz. We were amongst them.

— Umlauf in 2011

Liberation and recovery

The liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945

Only by luck were Umlauf and her mother able to survive the concentration camp during their three-month imprisonment until its liberation by the Red Army on 27 January 1945. Umlauf and her mother were both malnourished with rickets and tuberculosis, and her mother was also pregnant and suffering from jaundice. Because they were unable to be transported due to their malnutrition and poor health, they remained in Auschwitz for some weeks after its liberation. There, a doctor told Umlauf's mother that she and her and unborn child would not survive, but neither of these assertations were correct, and Umlauf's sister Eleonora (Nora) was born healthy in the camp in April 1945.

When the rest of the family returned to Czechoslovakia in July 1945, they brought with a boy named Tomi from the same town as them, both of whose parents had died in Auschwitz; Umlauf's mother was able to relocate the child's parents. As well as her father, Umlauf's mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, great-grandfather, and three aunts had all also been killed. Umlauf and her mother were sent to the High Tatras to recover from their tuberculosis, for which there was no medicinal cure at the time. Umlauf has no memories from her time at Auschwitz, but has said that on returning "something is triggered deep inside me"; her first memories are of her recovery in the following years. She was one of the few Slovaks who survived Auschwitz, of the thousands deported there. When asked what Auschwitz is to her, she replied "für mich ist das der größte Friedhof der Welt" – "to me it is the largest cemetery in the world".

Life after World War II

Career

Comenius University, where Umlauf studied medicine

After returning from their recovery in the High Tatras, Umlauf's family lived in Trenčín, Slovakia, where both she and her sister successfully completed their Abitur. Umlauf then studied medicine at Comenius University, Bratislava, before marrying the Polish Holocaust-survivor and building contractor Jakob Sultanik in 1966. In 1967, the pair moved to Munich, East Germany. There, they successfully completed training to become paediatricians at the München Klinik Harlaching (English: Harlaching Clinic, Munich). After the Prague Spring her mother fled to Munich alongside her second husband. Her sister, also a doctor, was by this time in Munich as well. After the accidental death of her first husband in 1971, Umlauf married again to Dr Bernd Umlauf and had two sons, alongside one son from her first marriage.

Umlauf later stated that "it’s no accident that I and my sister became doctors" as the two "had an absolute primal need to help people and save lives" in light of their experiences, something she affirmed in an interview with 3sat. From 1976 she worked for many years as a paediatrician in Munich, before becoming qualified in psychotherapeutic medicine and has been active as a psychotherapist since 1996. In this role she has worked with both victims and perpetrators of the Holocaust. One particular interest of hers is the inheritance of trauma between generations, which she encountered through her mother's own refusal to talk about the Holocaust. She is a member of the Ärztlichen Akademie für Psychotherapie von Kindern und Jugendlichen (Medical Academy for Psychotherapy of Children and Young People).

Memoir and Holocaust education

A Bayerischer Verfassungsorden, which Umlauf was awarded

On 27 January 2011, Eva Umlauf spoke at an anniversary service commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz. After a heart attack in February 2014, she decided to publicly share her experiences. In March 2016, her memoir, titled Die Nummer auf deinem Unterarm ist blau wie deine Augen (The Number On Your Forearm Is Blue Like Your Eyes), was published by Hoffmann and Campe. The book was released in Slovak in 2018. The title of the book is a line of a poem that a friend of Umlauf's sent to her. In an interview, she said that she wrote the book so that the fate of her family would not be forgotten, as it was not available in existing records.

In June 2024, an interview with Umlauf by Timofey Neshitov, which was published in Dem Spiegel with the title Die Perfekte Zeugin (The Perfect Witness), won the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize. This is a reference to her as a Zeitzeugin ('Contemporary Witness'), a person who is able to testify the events of a particular foregone time period.

On 30 January 2025, Umlauf reached out to Friedrich Merz in an open letter published in Süddeutsche Zeitung; writing to him "as one of the last Holocaust survivors in Germany". She warned him, amongst other things, to protect against right-wing extremism, and advised him to seek compromise with democratic parties, as otherwise enemies of democracy would be normalised. She regularly visits schools in hopes of preventing the rise of radicalisation and antisemitism, and to encourage discussing the Holocaust even though it is an upsetting topic. On 30 May 2025, she was elected President of the International Auschwitz Committee; she succeeded to Marian Turski, who had passed away. In December 2025, Umlauf was awarded the Bayerischer Verfassungsorden (Bavarian Constitution Order).

Selected works

• Umlauf, Eva; Oswalt, Stefanie (2016). Die Nummer auf deinem Unterarm ist blau wie deine Augen [The Number on Your Forearm Is Blue Like Your Eyes] (in German). Hoffmann und Campe. ISBN 978-3-455-50370-8. – Umlauf's memoir of the Holocaust.
• Föderl-Schmid, Alexandra; Müller, Konrad Rufus (2019). Unfassbare Wunder: Gespräche mit Holocaust-Überlebenden in Deutschland, Österreich und Israel [Incomprehensible Wonders: Conversations with Holocaust Survivors in Germany, Austria, and Israel] (in German). Böhlau Verlag. pp. 170–177. ISBN 978-3205232261. – Umlauf is interviewed in the cited pages.

Further reading

• Neshitov, Timofey (11 March 2023). "Die perfekte Zeugin" [The Perfect Witness] (PDF). Der Spiegel. Retrieved 18 July 2026 – via Deutscher Reporter:innenpreis. This piece won the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize.
• Streckfuss, Christiane (25 January 2025). I survived Auschwitz (Documentary). Deutsche Welle. – A documentary on Umlauf's story

External links

• Official website