Goti Bauer

Testimonies

Over the past twenty years, Goti Bauer has been one of the most active and authoritative witnesses to the Shoah. Her tireless efforts, addressed principally to students, have brought her into contact with tens of thousands of young people throughout Italy. Her story has been told in a multitude of books, interviews, and articles, but her voice continues to be the clearest and most compelling instrument for driving out indifference and the trivialization of memory.

Goti Bauer’s testimony has been collected in the form of a private interview.

Goti Bauer (née Agata Herskovitz) was born in Berehove (then in Czechoslovakia) on 29 July 1924. Her
family later moved to Rijeka (at the time the Italian city of Fiume), where she lived until 1944. She was
arrested in Cremenaga (province of Varese) on 2 May 1944 while trying to escape to Switzerland. She was
held in prisons in Varese, Como, and Milan before being taken to the transit camp in Fossoli. On 16 May
1944 she was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau: prisoner code A-5372. She was liberated from
Theresienstadt on 9 May 1945 and is the only survivor in her family.

(Biographical notes taken from Il libro della Memoria. Gli ebrei deportati dall’Italia (1943-1945)“, di Liliana Picciotto, edizioni Mursia, 2002).