Born in Kisar, Hungary, and one of eight children, Elizabeth Blum’s peaceful family life was destroyed when the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944. They were sent to the ghetto in Mátészalka, Hungary and later deported to Auschwitz. Elizabeth was in six concentration camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland; Płaszów, Poland; Hundsfeld, Germany; Gross-Rosen, Germany; Mauthausen, Austria; and Bergen-Belsen, Germany. She was liberated in 1945 and sent to a Swedish hospital, emaciated and ill.