The last time I saw Livia, we met at her Stockholm apartment on a memorable, warm late summer afternoon to discuss the life of our mutual friend, Pacsi, who had passed away during the pandemic at the age of 98. "Pacsi," or songbird, as she was nicknamed in Hungarian, for the beautiful voice she'd had before Auschwitz (where, it was said, the bromide added to the water to placate the inmates caused her to lose her voice), "was a bit special," Livia said, in her haunting soft-spoken fashion that made me want to know all about her rather than the albeit interesting person I had come to talk to her about. After the war, Livia, her sister Hédi, and Pacsi, all having survived Auschwitz and other camps, ended up as refugees in barracks on the idyllic Swedish island of Lovö, not far from where I live. Most thought Pacsi was crazy, but Livia would never have said that because she'd met too many people in her 96-year-old life to make such sweeping judgments.

We'd met on numerous occasions through the years, intersecting through her more vocal and visible sister, Hédi, who, by all accounts, had narrowly saved her teenage sister from gassing by disguising her illness when they were in Auschwitz. For forty years, having cast off the pall of the Nazis by her love of life and bringing a large family into the world, she visited schools, speaking of her experience in hopes of preventing history from repeating itself. Despite all the many times we met, including at my house, where my husband and I once hosted Livia, Hédi, and Pacsi for lunch, until I listened to her unforgettable program on Sommar, a Swedish summer radio program in which outstanding Swedes or friends of Sweden share their experiences and favorite music in a 90-minute program, I only knew her story through Hédi, a human rights icon and psychologist who published several books about what she and her sister had endured.  Livia was always the enigmatic, quiet one, both warm and reserved, until I heard that program, which, for me, ranks with Ingmar Bergman's Sommar program that once brought Sweden to a halt.
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When the final draft of my book, The Pendulum, was ready, I shared it with Livia and Hédi, doubting that I should publish it at all. It isn't easy to go out into the world with a family perpetrator story, and they both understood this, despite or perhaps because of what they had endured. "I really think you should be invited to speak on Sommar, and I told them so," Livia said as we sat on the terrace of her apartment on that warm summer afternoon. I didn't know what to say. Would I have been able to show the same generosity of spirit had the tables been turned? This is the challenge Livia leaves me with, the challenge she leaves all of us with. Meeting it is the only thing that will save the world.
 
*When Hédi died at the age of 98, soon three years ago, Livia said that, when her time came, she knew her sister would be waiting for her, there to show her the way, as she always had. Here is the short reflection I wrote about Hédi on her passing in 2022.