Levy and her family, nine people in all, hid in a barn owned by a non-Jewish woman they called “the angel.”
“We didn’t talk, we didn’t laugh, we didn’t cry, we didn’t cough. We were quiet, we knew how to behave,” she said. “Thirty-one people survived in my hometown, all (were) in hiding by non-Jews. No one else came back from anyplace else.”
Levy, at 12, was in Austria after the war, living in barracks of a displaced persons camp after six years in hiding.
“This was the best time of my life. I was free. I was able to live, to talk to people again, to watch the kids play,” she recalled.
“Can you imagine now, after 75 years, that I have to get up one morning and hear what happened in Pittsburgh?” she asked, referring to the slaughter at a synagogue in October 2018.
“I am hoping that the Jews can (connect) the dots now,” said Levy.