Litzi Lemberg

Prepared by the Witnesses of War team

Litzi Lemberg was born Felizitas Sonnenschein in 1939 in Vienna, Austria, already under Nazi rule. At approximately three years old, she was deported to Terezín (Theresienstadt), the ghetto-concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. Her biological parents and brother were murdered during the Holocaust, leaving Litzi the only survivor of her immediate family.

After the war, she was taken to Lingfield House, a Jewish children’s home in Surrey, England. An uncle located her through a Red Cross list of survivors from Theresienstadt and took her into his family. Litzi arrived in Australia in 1948, growing up believing that the people raising her were her biological parents.

At seventeen, an argument unexpectedly revealed the truth: the man she called her father was actually her uncle. Memories she had struggled to understand—wooden bunks, shaved heads, cobblestones, bare feet and a flight to England—began to acquire meaning. Yet the discovery was overwhelming, and she remained silent about her past for many years.

A turning point came in 1985, when she attended a talk by psychologist Sarah Moskovitz, whose research concerned children who had survived Theresienstadt and subsequently lived at Lingfield House. Recognizing her own experiences, Litzi spoke with Moskovitz the following day and began putting her fragmented memories into words.

Litzi later helped Eva Engel establish the Sydney Child Holocaust Survivors Group, becoming its spokesperson. Through the group and her work as a Sydney Jewish Museum guide and survivor speaker, she has helped others understand the lasting effects of childhood persecution. Her testimony also emphasizes the importance of education, mutual respect and bringing communities together against prejudice.