Book presentation and talk with Stephanie Lunkewitz
Eva Diamant is twelve years old when the Soviet army liberates 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.
Image gallery
VISUAL „Ich war Eva Diamant“
Stephanie Lunkewitz (author, illustrator of the above book, Board Director of the Wende Museum, Los Angeles) will present the book in dialog with Benno Herz (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 testimony, with impressive images and texts. A moving and harrowing book."
Barbara Yellin, illustrator, Gustav Heinemann Peace Prize for Children's and Youth Books 2024
In collaboration with Holocaust survivor Eva Szepesi, née Diamant, this book was conceived and realized together with author and illustrator Stephanie Lunkewitz. Lunkewitz's neo-realistic pictures introduce this difficult subject: 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 with her husband and three children in Los Angeles, USA.
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 “I was 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.
(IN GERMAN)
Additional information
Participating artists
Stephanie Lunkewitz
Dates
October 2025
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