Ocalali z Holokaustu - AFP

Holocaust survivor 98 year-old Judit Varga Hoffmann (R) poses with her granddaughter Groo Diana at her home in Budapest on January 3, 2025. Varga Hoffmann was born on May 5, 1927, in Szombathely, Hungary. She and her family were deported from Nagykanizsa to Auschwitz in April 1944, where she was separated from her parents and brother. Shortly after, she was transported to the Gleiwitz camp for forced labour at a lampblack factory. In January 1945, eight months after her arrival, the camp was evacuated, with the prisoners forced to march for three days in the harsh winter, then spent 10 days in cramped open carts without food or water before reaching the Ravensbruck camp where she was reunited with her mother. Two weeks later, they both got transferred to the Retzow-Rechlin subcamp, where they were drafted into forced labour, again. Her mother did not survive the harsh conditions. Varga Hoffmann regained her freedom on her 18th birthday on May 5, 1945 when Russian forces liberated the camp. She returned to Nagykanizsa weeks later, before learning that none of her close relatives had survived the camps. She has a daughter, two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. (Photo by ATTILA KISBENEDEK / AFP)