Holocaust survivor pens moving piece about Covid-19 ‘stealing’ her last years

Toby Levy, 87, wrote column in the New York Times explaining how her freedom has been taken away after surviving the Nazis

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Toby Levy thought: “I’m a miracle. I will make it. I have to make it.”

That’s because Levy, as she explains in a New York Times op-ed published Sunday, is an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor from what was then Poland and is now Ukraine.

She survived by hiding in a cellar and then later a 4-by-5-foot spot in a barn during the war.

As she writes:

During the war, we didn’t know if we would make a day. I didn’t have any freedom. I couldn’t speak loudly, I couldn’t laugh, I couldn’t cry.

But now, I can feel freedom. I stay by the window and look out. The first thing I do in the morning is look out and see the world. I am alive. I have food, I go out, I go for walks, I do some shopping. And I remember: No one wants to kill me. So, still, I read. I cook a little bit. I shop a little bit. I learned the computer. I do puzzles.

I still sometimes feel that I am missing out. A full year is gone. I lost my childhood, I never had my teenage years. And now, in my old age, this is shortening my life by a year. I don’t have that many years left. The way we have lived this year means I have lost many opportunities to lecture, to tell more people my story, to let them see me and know the Holocaust happened to a real person, who stands in front of them today. It’s important.

Read the rest of the sobering op-ed here.