Holocaust survivor lost 26 family members in Nazi concentration camps

Holocaust survivor, 88-year-old Gidon Lev, lost 26 members of his family in the Nazi concentration camps. At the age of six, Lev was placed in the Theresienstadt ghetto and spent over four years there. He lost his childhood as well as his family he said. Terezin (Theresienstadt), a fortress and garrison town built at the end of the 18th century, was used by the Nazis as a transit camp for Jews rounded up in Czechoslovakia and deported from elsewhere in Europe. They were held in the ghetto until they could be transported to camps farther east. Years later, Lev still remembers the pervading feeling of permanent hunger that plagued him, along with the hope and will to survive. “Children do not want to die. Children want to stay alive“ he said, saying how they took on extra work in the camp for half a potato, or tried to steal them. Lev regularly attends protests, he has even had a TikTok channel where he speaks about his experiences who has given tours of Auschwitz, where h