„Ich war Eva Diamant“: Eine Veranstaltung in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Thomas Mann House, L.A.

Eva Diamant was twelve years old when the Soviet army liberated her in Auschwitz in January 1945. Together with illustrator Stephanie Lunkewitz and accompanied by expressive pictures, she tells her moving story of survival in this book. It is the story of a sheltered childhood in a middle-class Jewish family in Budapest, of her initial ostracism at school, her escape from Hungary, the loss of her father, mother and brother and finally her deportation to the Auschwitz concentration camp. But it is also a story of love, friendship and support.

Stephanie Lunkewitz (author, illustrator of the book, Board Director of the Wende Museum, Los Angeles) will present the book in conversation with Benno Herz (Program Director of the Thomas Mann House, Los Angeles).

This event is supported by Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e.V. Los Angeles & Berlin.
Overall organization: Barbara Stang, PR

"An important contemporary testimony, in impressive pictures and texts. A moving and harrowing book."
(Barbara Yellin, illustrator, Gustav Heinemann Peace Prize for Children's and Youth Books 2024)

This book was conceived and realized in collaboration with Holocaust survivor Eva Szepesi, née Diamant, together with author and illustrator Stephanie Lunkewitz. Lunkewitz's neo-realistic pictures introduce this difficult topic: a book for young readers from the age of 12 up to old age. The illustrator was born in Germany and received her diploma in design from Burg Giebichenstein University. She then studied Art History at the J.W. Goethe University and Picture Book Writing and Business at the University of California, Los Angeles, and now lives in Los Angeles, USA, with her husband and three children.

When the great fire broke out in the region on January 7, 2025, her house burned to the ground. The family was able to escape to safety, with hardly any of the many books and typescripts remaining, but the original illustrations for "Ich war Eva Diamant" were saved from the flames by Stephanie Lunkewitz's husband Bernd F. Lunkewitz, the former Aufbau publisher, while the family otherwise lost their belongings, their book collection of signed copies and precious first editions....