Lucy Lowell, who built a full life in New York City and survived a deadly Nazi concentration camp to eventually settle in Miami Beach, is the last of an important and increasingly unusual group of people.
At 103, she is one of the oldest living survivors in the world.
It is a population that disappears with each passing year. A new report shows that only 1,400 survivors are alive today for ages 100 and above. That means that the opportunity to hear first-hand stories of durability in the face of enormous evil will soon pass by.
In the next six years, half of Holocaust survivors will die. Also, 70% will die in 10 years, according to a population forecast report from the Jewish Material Claims Conference against Germany, also known as the Claims Conference.
The findings “remind us that our time is almost over,” said Gideon Taylor, chairman of the Claims Council. “Our survivors are leaving us, and this is the moment we hear them,” he said.
And Lowell isn’t even the oldest in Florida. Another Florida survivor, Lithuanian-born Marca Schmlovitz, was recently recognized by the city of Miami Beach on her 109th birthday. Schmulovitz was not available for interviews, but told the claims meeting that their experiences should never be forgotten.
“To be one of the oldest survivors living at my age now is that we run our time,” Schmlowitz told the Claims Conference. “We all have testimonies that need to be shared.”
Lowell admits that she is trying to put her past behind her when she builds a new life in the United States. After decades of silence about her experiences of fleeing Auschwitz and surviving the Holocaust, she turned down an interview with Steven Spielberg’s team for the former Oscar-winning film Schindler’s List.
“At the time, we didn’t talk about it. We wanted a new life and enjoyed each other (not so) living in it,” she said.
That change in mind is partly due to a recent gift from researchers: a long book from Lowell’s childhood.
“I was shocked,” Lowell said. “I was shocked.”
A tiny, stylish woman with a warm smile, Lowell recently sat at her Miami Beach apartment on Collins Avenue and looked back at these artefacts, causing a painful flood of memories.
She thumbed up the book on Jewish philosophy given to her brother Gerhard on his Baa Mitzbah Day. Gerhard was later killed in Auschwitz.
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“I remember very well – beautiful parties, family…friends. I even remember the dress I wore,” she said.
The family’s book was discovered in a private collection of 10,000 stolen Jewish books owned by Julius Strycher, the publisher of anti-Semitic Nazi newspapers, according to the Sunday Times, and was returned to the Jewish genealogy resources at the Jewish Genetic Museum in New York and the Leo Black Institute, in the efforts of the Jewish project.
Now, more than 80 years after Auschwitz was released, Lowell looks back on his two-part life. In an interview with the Miami Herald, she recalled events that changed the course of her life.
“I have always had good memories. What can I say? I’m blessed with not having Alzheimer’s or those diseases,” she said. “It’s still there.”
I remember the “previous”
Before the Holocaust, Lowell was living a happy life with his parents and older brother in Berlin. She recalls “great” childhood memories. He took a summer vacation with his family and attended the now-famous Olympic Games in 1936, where Jesse Owens made history.
She loved sports, dancing and admiring the beautiful things of life. For example, her mother’s stylish wardrobe sparked a lifelong interest in fashion design.
Then, on November 9, 1938, with one violent night, Lowell’s known and loved life began to fall apart.
The Nazis set fire to a synagogue that included Lowell and his family members, destroying thousands of Jewish homes and businesses, killing nearly 100 Jews, and igniting a wave of violence that led to the arrest and deporting thousands of other people. The night then became known as Crystal Nacht, or “The Night of Broken Glass,” marking a turning point in the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany, moving from social discrimination and propaganda to violence and fear.
The next few years will mark one of the darkest times in human history, both for Lowell and millions of other Jews around the world. Overall, six million European Jews and other minorities were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
As things got worse for Jews, Lowell’s parents arranged to live with their relatives in New York. However, due to travel restrictions, her family never reached America.
“The consulate was closed, but we didn’t make it,” she said. “The entire living room was packed with boxes, wooden frames and suitcases to ship to America. And we got stuck.”
Soon after that, Lowell’s family was visited by Nazi officials overnight.
“I had just finished dinner,” she said. She said, “I knocked on the door and two Gestapo officers came. They said, “We must drive you out and expel you into Poland.
In Utz, Lowell’s family lived in “primitive” conditions among many other families in the same brink and cold barracks. The conditions were very unsanitary, and both Lowell’s parents died of illness. Perhaps typhus was a major trend at the time that killed thousands of Jews living in the ghetto.
Lowell recalls lying in a hospital bed for several weeks.
“My parents, at least they died in bed, not Auschwitz,” she said.
After she reunited with her brother in the ghetto, the two brothers left the barracks and moved into a small empty seat. Lowell was able to do various jobs while living in the ghetto. She remembers working in a wheat field, planting and sewing, skills she felt alien to her as someone who grew up in a big city, and another job working in a Nazi-run factory making home shoes for soldiers.
“When I was working, I chose wheat and ate it and put it in my pocket to come back for my brother,” she said.
Survived Auschwitz
Then, in 1944, after the ghetto was settled, Lowell, her brothers and two German-speaking colleagues were forced into a crowded cow car, bringing anything they could carry with them for a long journey. She didn’t know that at the time, but Lowell was being transported to Auschwitz.
When they arrived at the camp, the soldiers ordered the men and women to separate, lined up and marched in long lines. During this time, Lowell was separated from his brother.
“There was a famous doctor… His name was Joseph Mengele. He had a high fence to tell people, “You go to the right, you go to the left.” If you want to get away, there was one figure there… this was Auschwitz.
Joseph Mengele was one of the most notorious figures of the Holocaust, a ghoul who, along with other German researchers, conducted a terrible medical experiment on prisoners, and a ghoul who chose the victims to be killed in the gas chambers.
The last time Lowell met the brother she worshiped was in a concentration camp.
“We were unsure,” Lowell said, adding that she had no idea what was going on with her at the time. She remembers living in barracks with 800 women in dark conditions, ordered by the Nazis. She was given a rag to sleep with other prisoners on a concrete floor and wear as clothing.
Lowell went to 20 other women and worked in the factory. There, the company director was kind enough to give knitting needles to make clothes.
“He gave us tan yarn and I knitted myself a beautiful dress,” she said. “I had my mother’s dress in mind. It was so pretty that I tried to knit something like her dress.”
She doesn’t know why she was chosen or how she was chosen (her mundane Germans may have helped), but the challenge may have helped save her life.
The Auschwitz concentration camp was then released on January 27, 1945. Lowell was only 23 years old and had no immediate family or home left.
After her time at camp, Lowell relied on the kindness of strangers slowly and slowly, but certainly she had built a new life for herself.
Lowell moved to Queens, Flushing, to live with her extended family. She worked in fashion design in an office near Times Square and soon met her late husband, Frederick Lowell. She married at the age of 26 and lived a beautiful life in Manhattan, where her husband helped her build a business. Her days were filled with day trips to the Metropolitan Opera, global trips and fun. She was once a champion water skier.
Currently in Miami Beach, Lowell is an avid reader, especially the news reader, and she loves to watch TV and visit with friends. She recently shared her story at an event at the Jewish Museum in Florida. There, people said they were “shocked” and wanted to take a photo with her after the event.
After spending most of her life avoiding the topic of her survival, Lowell hopes people will hear her simple yet important message:
“You shouldn’t hate people. You shouldn’t discriminate… Yes, you know what’s going to happen,” she said.
The story was created from donors, including the Jewish and Muslim communities in South Florida, including Khalid and Diana Mirza, in partnership with financial support from Trish and Dan Bell, and with journalism fundraising partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editing control of this work.
