Author and Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert dies aged 100

Author and Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert has died at the age of 100, her publisher Pan Macmillan has confirmed.

Ebert was the author of Lily’s Promise: How I Survived Auschwitz and Found the Strength to Live (Macmillan), as well as a "TikTok star" and the matriarch of a large family.

According to Pan Macmillan, she "passed away peacefully with her family around her" on 9th October 2024.

The author was born Lily Engelman in Bonyhad, Hungary, in 1923. She was sent to Auschwitz at the age of 20 in July 1944 with her mother and siblings. Her mother and younger brother and sister were sent to the gas chamber when they arrived, while Ebert and her sisters Renee and Piri were starved, brutalised and made to do slave labour.

All three sisters survived and emigrated to Israel in 1946, where Lily married Shmuel Ebert, with whom she had three children before the family moved to London in the 1960s.

During lockdown, Ebert’s great-grandson Dov Forman used social media to track down the American serviceman who had helped liberate her and who had given her a banknote on which he had written "good luck and happiness". Forman also set up a TikTok account for Ebert, which has gained 1.7 million followers, and the pair worked together on her autobiography, which was published when the author was 97. Ebert was also awarded an MBE at the age of 99.

King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, wrote the foreword for Lily’s Promise, when the book was published in hardback in 2021 by Pan Macmillan’s publishing director Ingrid Connell. 

"It was such an honour to meet and work with Lily, who was always charming, funny, positive and determined – one of a kind," Connell said. "She truly was an inspiration and we at Pan Macmillan are immensely proud to have played our part in bringing her story and her message to the world. She may have left us, but the flame she lit will burn on."

Literary agent Diana Beaumont added: "Lily Ebert was the most incredible woman I have ever met – kind, positive and always sharing her message of tolerance and peace. She survived unspeakable horrors but went on to live the most inspiring life as an educator and, latterly, a writer, fulfilling the promise she made to herself at Auschwitz to tell her story. It was a privilege to have worked with her and her great-grandson Dov on Lily’s Promise and to share that message so widely. My heartfelt condolences to her beloved family, friends and all those who were touched by her remarkable spirit."