The German „Wehrmacht“’s occupation of Hungary in March 1944 marked the beginning of the systematic persecution and deportation of Hungarian Jews. Sara and her family were deported to Strasshof (now in Austria) in June; from there, the family was sent on to perform forced labour in agriculture. In December 1944, the Schutzstaffel SS finally deported Sara’s family to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as part of a transport comprising a total of 2,178 prisoners.
On 13 April 1945, Sara was liberated by the US Army in one of three evacuation transports near Farsleben, close to Magdeburg. At the time of her liberation, Sara weighed just seventeen kilograms. A total of sixty members of her family were murdered. Together with other surviving family members, she emigrated that same year to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine. In 1954, she married Uri Atzmon and had six children.
For a long time, Sara avoided coming to terms with the persecution she had suffered at the hands of the National Socialist Germans. It was only after a visit to Hungary in the 1980s that this changed, and she began to engage with the Holocaust as an artist, telling her personal story through artworks as well. In 2010, her ink drawing ‘The Star of David Does Not Protect Us’, which was also realised as an iron sculpture, formed part of the exhibition ‘Signs of Survival: Remembering Bergen-Belsen’.
In 2025, she published her eyewitness account together with her granddaughter Yael; it appeared in German under the title “Und ich habe doch gesiegt!” (And Yet I Triumphed!).
Sara Atzmon has now passed away in Israel on 23 June 2026 at the age of 93.
Our thoughts are with her husband Uri and her family.