Fanny Eyal Ben-Ami: Tenacious Holocaust Heroine

by Linda Harris Sittig

January was Holocaust Remembrance Month, paying homage to the 11 million victims of the Holocaust. It was almost seventy-eight years ago, in 1945, the death camp of Auschwitz was liberated, and the world at large learned about the horrors of the concentration camps.

All of the stories of the Holocaust are emotional on so many levels, but every once in a while, a story emerges that graces us with courage, triumph, and hope. Fanny Ben-Ami is that story.

I rarely write about Strong Women who are still living, but Fanny’s story is so compelling that I chose her for this month’s Strong Woman.

BEFORE THE WAR

Born into a Jewish family in 1930 in Baden-Baden, Germany, Fanny was five years old when her parents and two younger sisters fled to Paris, France, due to Adolf Hitler’s increased power. When WWII broke out in September of 1939, Fanny’s father was promptly arrested by the French secret police. Eight months later, Fanny’s mother sent her three young daughters into hoped-for safety at Chateau de Chaumont, an orphanage aligned with the O.S.E. – Children’s Aid Society.

Under their protection, Fanny watched over her little sisters in the orphanage for three years and tried to cheer up the other children, all of whom missed their families.

Then in July of 1942, a villager alerted the Gestapo that Jewish children were being harbored in the orphanage. The children were quickly scattered to other safe havens inside Vichy, France.

The following Spring, Fanny and her sisters reunited briefly with their mother in Vichy. However, with the Gestapo drawing closer, the O.S.E. decided the children would be safer in the Swiss Alps. Holding her daughters’ hands, Madame Eyal tearfully told the children they would all be together again as she watched them board the bus bound for the train to Switzerland.

THE DANGEROUS JOURNEY

A seventeen-year-old girl was in charge of the children on their journey but panicked when, close to the border, Nazi soldiers boarded the train. She refused to go on. In an instant, Fanny led the children off the train and helped the group climb inside a postal railcar instead.

After the postal train, the children were discovered by French police, who imprisoned them for several days without food in the hopes that the children would give up the names of their parents. None of the children cooperated. The group numbered 28; the youngest child was four, and Fanny was only thirteen.

Fanny finally managed to smuggle the children out a bathroom window. Once in the village, she led them in line, all singing, posing as children on a camp excursion. When they reached the outskirts of the town, Fanny ran with the children into the forest. Knowing that Switzerland lay to the east, Fanny encouraged the children not to lose hope, even as they grew weaker due to a lack of enough food.

After several days, the group was suddenly only 5 km (3 miles) from the Swiss border. They were now close to freedom. They ran as fast as they could, dashing across a vast open meadow and helping each other through a break in the chain fence into the demilitarized zone. But Margalit, the youngest, had fallen behind. It was Fanny who ran back to retrieve the young child and carried her while Nazi soldiers fired at them.

As they finally made it to the freedom of Switzerland, Fanny collapsed on safe ground. All twenty-eight children, including her two sisters, were safe at last.

AFTER THE WAR

For the remaining years of the war, Fanny stayed in Switzerland, helping send messages to French Resistance members. After the war, Fanny learned that her mother had died in Auschwitz and her father in Lubin.

When the war ended in 1945, Fanny returned to France, working with an aunt in the fur business. In 1955 she went to Israel to visit her sisters Erica and Georgette. Once in Israel, Fanny felt as though she had come home. She met and fell in love with a musician, and they married and raised a family in the suburbs of Tel Aviv. Once her children were grown, Fanny became a watercolor artist and eventually a writer, penning her memoir of that dangerous journey so long ago. Her memoir is Le Journal de Fanny. In 2016 her book was made into a movie, Fanny’s Journey.

Still alive at this writing, Fanny has spoken to groups of children and adults in Europe and America. She is truthful that she never intended to be a heroine, she only wanted to save her sisters and herself, but then she couldn’t abandon the other children.

She ends every speaking engagement with this last sentence: “Be careful, it could all happen again.”

Sobering words for our time.

I hope you enjoyed Fanny’s story. If you are not yet a follower of this blog and would like to receive the blog once a month, sign up with your email on the right sidebar.

I am eagerly awaiting the debut of my newest book, a children’s book titled Opening Closed Doors, which will be available on May 9, 2023. It is the story of a strong woman, Josie Murray, whose courage forced the desegregation of public libraries in Virginia in 1957.

~ Linda