Lily Ebert’s great-grandson in Hungary to get her brother’s holy book

The 19-year-old who wrote a bestseller about his 99-year-old great grandmother surviving Auschwitz has travelled to Hungary to pick up a Jewish bible that belonged to her brother.

Dov Forman, from London, who wrote about Lily Ebert in ‘Lily’s Promise’, was then able to show Lily the holy book with her brother’s signature inside when he visited his elderly relative in hospital, as she recovers from surgery.

Lily’s brother Bela was killed at Auschwitz aged 13 and said the bible was “the only link we have to Bela’s existence”.

The Germans occupied Hungary from March 1944 and the family were deported from their hometown of Bonyhad in the summer of that year, shortly before the area was captured and occupied by Soviet troops in November.

Forman has used social media to spread the story of his great-grandmother and this week tweeted photos of his visit, describing a town that was “once vibrant with Jewish life”. In 1941, Jews comprised 14 percent of the population.

This is Forman’s first visit to Hungary, and after seeing the capital Budapest, he prayed at the empty synagogue in Bonyhad, which Forman said was a “haunting reminder of the effects of the Holocaust”.

He described the bible as “a valuable piece of history, a rare book which is the only living memory of my great-grandmother’s youngest brother”.

Lily, who has been awarded an MBE for her work educating young people about the Holocaust, was hospitalised last week. The surgery is reported to have gone well.