“I should have been as famous as Anne Frank” - The untold story of Sheindi Miller

In a quiet room filled with the soft hum of an oxygen machine, Sheindi Miller sat across from me, finally ready to tell her story – a story she’d held close for decades.

It was a year and a half ago, a month after she’d been released from the hospital, her breathing still reliant on the steady rhythm of the machine by her side. The world around us was in chaos, embroiled in Israel’s judicial reform debates, but Sheindi was focused on a different kind of justice – a justice that required her story to be told, to reach the ears of a world she felt hadn’t listened enough.

I’ve known of her story for a few years, since her eldest grandson, Netanel Miller, became my best friend immediately after we finished high school – and now are (almost) next-door neighbors. My family, thank God, escaped Europe decades before the Holocaust, so to me Savta Sheindi, as she was called, became my direct and personal connection to the Nazi atrocities.

Sheindi passed away on October 28 at her home in Jerusalem at the age of 96, focused and sharp as ever until her last breath.

Her story begins

Sheindi Miller was born Sheindi Ehrenwald in 1929 in the small Slovak town of Galanta, where family, faith, and community defined life. But that life changed when she was 14. In March 1944, German forces entered Hungary, setting into motion a chain of events that would alter the course of Sheindi’s life.

On that day, Sheindi began writing in her diary, chronicling the confusion, fear, and brutality of a world suddenly turned upside down. Her diary would ultimately survive the Holocaust – the only known diary from Auschwitz to have done so.

“I remember the day like it was yesterday,” she told me, her voice low but clear. “We were all gathered in the house – my parents and my brothers. We had no idea what was coming.” She spoke about the shock, the fear, and the hurried decisions her family had to make. Her three brothers were drafted into forced labor battalions, leaving Sheindi and her parents behind.

She described watching her family fragment before her eyes, holding her diary like a lifeline. “Writing was the only thing I could control,” she said, “even as everything else was taken from me.”

The Germans soon rounded up Sheindi’s family, sending them to a brick factory in Nové Zámky before deporting them to Auschwitz. It was a journey that tore apart not only her family but also her sense of normalcy, of humanity. But Sheindi kept writing.

Using bits of scrap paper, cards, and any writing surface she could find, she poured her experiences onto the page. “I hid the pages in my clothing,” she recounted. “Every night, I would write what I saw, what I felt. It was dangerous, but it was my way of fighting back.”

A voice in Auschwitz

In Auschwitz, survival was a minute-to-minute battle. Sheindi described the harrowing scenes that filled her days and nights – the suffocating hunger, the merciless cold, and the friends who vanished without a trace.

“I watched people disappear every day,” she said, her eyes distant. “Some were too weak to stand and were taken straight to the crematorium. Others just... disappeared. I knew I had to write it all down. If I didn’t, it felt like none of it would be real.”

But the diary was real, and so was Sheindi’s fight to protect it. “I carried those pages with me everywhere,” she told me, placing her hand on her chest, where she had once hidden the fragile scraps of her testimony. “They were my voice when I had no voice.”

She described the risks she took to keep her diary, hiding it under her clothes, even concealing it under the straw in the bunk where she slept.

After liberation in 1945, Sheindi returned to Galanta, though her home was gone, and most of her family with it. She reunited with two of her brothers, and in 1949 they made their way to Israel, where they hoped to rebuild a life shattered by war. Sheindi married, raised a family, and settled in Jerusalem, yet her diary remained tucked away, hidden in the shadows of her memory.

“No one wanted to hear my story,” she explained. “In the 1970s, there was no room for Hungarian Jews like me. Everyone talked about Anne Frank.”

The comparison to Anne Frank stings, and Sheindi doesn’t hold back her feelings. “Anne Frank wrote beautifully, and her diary is important,” she admitted. “But she didn’t survive. I did. And that’s why I kept writing. I needed the world to know what we went through. My diary is the only one that survived Auschwitz. And yet, here I am, almost forgotten."

Recognition at last – from a surprising source

But in 2020, Sheindi’s story finally found the recognition it deserves – though not in the way she might have expected. It was in Germany, the country that once tried to erase her, that her diary gained prominence. The German newspaper Bild insured her diary for €350,000, understanding its historical and emotional value. They described it as one of the most detailed and compelling accounts of Auschwitz, a singular document that should be preserved for future generations.

Bild was the first news outlet to pay attention to this unbelievable story. The newspaper team spent a year researching Sheindi’s story in Israel, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, piecing together her life and the fate of her family through archival records. Although she became somewhat of a celebrity in Germany well after celebrating her 90th birthday, the elderly survivor nevertheless wasn’t able to reach a broader global audience.

Sheindi’s diary consists of 54 pages, written on scraps of paper and 52 dockets from the Karl Diehl arms company where she worked as a forced laborer. The remaining pages were written on small slips of paper, narrowly filled with her girlish handwriting. “It’s strange, isn’t it?” Sheindi said, shaking her head. “The Germans – the people who took everything from me – are the ones who finally recognized my story. They value it more than my own country does.”She shared how Bild had taken her diary and displayed it in an exhibition at the German Historical Museum, bringing her words to a new audience. “A friend of mine went to the exhibit,” she recounted. “He saw my diary, saw my name, and he fainted. He had no idea it was there.”

Alongside the exhibit, Bild also produced a documentary, Sheindi’s Diary, bringing her story to life on screen, diving into her experiences, her reflections, and the powerful legacy of her words. She recalled the moment she was approached about the documentary. “At first, I was hesitant,” she admitted. “I had kept my story hidden for so long. But they convinced me. They said, ‘Your story deserves to be told.’ And I thought, ‘Yes – it’s time.'”

In the documentary, Sheindi recounts her journey with a raw honesty that transcends time. She speaks of the train rides, cramped and suffocating, where “we were packed like animals, with no food, no water, for days.”

She describes the moment they arrived at Auschwitz, the smoke that filled the air, the burning bodies that were both a warning and a taunt. “I remember asking one of the guards about the smell,” she said. “He looked at me and said, ‘That’s the smell of your parents.’ It was a cruelty that I can’t explain.”

Even as she told her story, Sheindi’s words carried the weight of those she lost. “People think they know what happened,” she said, her voice dropping. “But they don’t. They don’t understand the hunger, the hopelessness, the way we were stripped of everything."

Home in Jerusalem

She talked about the divisions in Israel today and how they reminded her of the old tensions that once divided Jewish communities in Europe. “We’ve rebuilt a home here,” she said, “but we’re tearing it apart with our own hands. We can’t afford to forget where we came from.”

For Sheindi, the ultimate hope was that her diary would teach future generations about the consequences of hatred. “I wrote everything I saw, and I didn’t hide the truth,” she told me. “If my words can help prevent even one person from going down that path, then it was worth it.”

Yet, despite international recognition, Sheindi felt a lingering disappointment in her homeland. “I get calls from Germany, from all over the world,” she said, her voice tinged with sadness. “But here, in my own country, people barely know my name.”

She described how a delegation from the Knesset once visited her, asking questions but never engaging with her diary. “It’s like they were afraid of what they might find in my words,” she said. As mentioned, our conversation took place on a Saturday night, at the height of the anti-judicial reforms protests across Israel. Sheindi, who had watched the news most of the day, wasn’t happy with what she was hearing and seeing. "Unity is what holds the Jewish people together. How can we stay strong if we are shouting and fighting among ourselves? Without unity, we are lost.”

She also spoke of the modern State of Israel as a miracle, something that only someone who lived in Europe before the country was established can understand. “This is our land, mine and my children’s,” she said. “It’s something precious, something extraordinary. But we risk losing it if we don’t remember where we came from.”

Sheindi also spoke about the religious divisions in Israel. Her son is a Religious Zionist, and her daughter is ultra-Orthodox. She lived between the different communities. Commenting on those demonstrating against the judicial reforms, she said: “They say they don’t want religious people, but we are all part of the same nation. Without religion, Israel would not have been possible. It’s our roots, our foundation.”

She added, “The Arabs don’t have to do anything – they just sit back and watch as we hurt ourselves. They’re right when they say, ‘The Jews are destroying themselves.’ It breaks my heart.” As someone who said it like it is, Sheindi never held anything back and would always insist on saying she doesn’t necessarily sound smart, since she “never went to university” and “didn’t even finish high school.” Therefore, she explained why the hate pains her from within.“There were secular Jews who wanted to be like the Europeans, but even they ended up in the same camps as us. It doesn’t matter if you are religious or not – we are all Jews, and we need to act like it.”

She bashed Yair Lapid, chairman of the opposition, who was one of the leaders of the demonstrations. “Who is Yair Lapid to talk about unity? He doesn’t know what it means to serve, to sacrifice. My grandchildren serve in the army, fight for this land, and yet, here we are, arguing and tearing each other apart.”

Back then, there were debates whether members of the government and the Knesset should participate in Remembrance Day activities at military ceremonies. As someone who lost her son, Yitzhak Aharon, while serving in the IDF, she had thoughts on the matter. “I don’t care if the politicians come or don’t come to the memorial ceremonies. What bothers me is when they say it’s all because of [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. I’m with Netanyahu, but even he hasn’t done enough to fix things.” She added, “Even if the government doesn’t do what I think is right, we need to work together to protect this land. It’s our duty, not just that of the politicians.”

A significant piece of history

For decades, Sheindi felt ignored by Yad Vashem, Israel’s central Holocaust remembrance institution. Despite the historical significance of her diary, which details the horrors she witnessed and endured, her story went unrecognized.“For 50 years, I went to Yad Vashem and told them to read my writing. Everything is there – how they took our money, what my father and mother said, how they closed the doors on us. But no one wanted to listen because I was from Hungary,” she said with visible frustration.

In the 1970s, the focus was elsewhere, primarily on the stories of Polish Jews or Anne Frank. Hungarian Jews, she felt, were an afterthought in the broader narrative of Holocaust memory.

Determined to preserve her legacy, Sheindi hired Naomi Morgenstern to translate her diary into Hebrew, working together for a year to make the text accessible. Even then, Yad Vashem showed no interest in publishing it. “They have so much money, but they throw it away on other things. My diary is history. It’s the truth. But they didn’t care to even look at it,” she said, her voice tinged with disappointment.

For Sheindi, Yad Vashem’s lack of action was a hurtful reminder of how her story – and the stories of many Hungarian Jews – had been marginalized.

Our conversation lasted hours, moving between memories, reflections, and regrets. Sheindi’s life was one of resilience, marked by a fierce determination to survive and a quiet insistence that her story matters. As I sat across from her, I felt a profound sense of responsibility. Her words were not just a recounting of history – they were a plea, a reminder, a testament.

“I don’t know how much longer I have,” she said softly, glancing at the oxygen machine beside her. “But I’m glad I got to say it. I’m glad someone finally heard me.”

At that moment, I understood the weight of her words. Sheindi Miller’s diary, hidden and carried through the worst of humanity, was more than a document – it was her legacy.And now it’s our responsibility to ensure that her story reaches a world that must never forget.

The writer’s interview with Sheindi Miller was originally recorded a year and a half ago, but life intervened, and the article has now been finalized. We are pleased to grant her the recognition she deserves and publish her plea for unity at this pivotal time.