80 Years On, Mauthausen Survivor Unites with Eisenhower Family in Powerful Tribute to Liberation & Holocaust Remembrance
Eva Clarke, liberated as an infant by American army, met Eisenhower's great-grandson at event held by the International March of the Living & Eisenhower family
WASHINGTON , DC, UNITED STATES, February 26, 2025 / EINPresswire.com / -- In an emotional tribute to liberation and Holocaust remembrance, Holocaust survivor Eva Clarke today met President Dwight D. Eisenhower's great-grandson for the first time, at a March of the Living Washington event to personally thank him for the role that the Americans troops had in liberating her and other survivors. The event marked the new collaboration between the International March of the Living Holocaust education organization and the Eisenhower family.
This landmark partnership will see Merrill Eisenhower joining the 2025 March of the Living on Holocaust Remembrance Day from Auschwitz to Birkenau death camps, walking alongside Holocaust survivors and thousands of participants from around the world to honor the memory of the victims and the heroism of the liberators and the survivors. The collaboration underscores the continued commitment of the Eisenhower family and March of the Living to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are preserved for future generations.
Monday's event was attended by prominent figures from both the Jewish community and beyond, including Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter, who addressed the event.
Eva Clarke, who was born in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria in 1945, one week before the camp's official liberation by U.S. Army forces under General Eisenhower, said upon meeting Eisenhower: 'I am the infant your great grandfather and the American soldiers saved. Had he and his soldiers not arrived in time, I would not be standing here today. General Eisenhower wasn't just a military man, but a visionary leader. He saw the dangers of Holocaust denial the moment he witnessed the atrocities committed by the Nazis. He fought against this – and you, Merrill, by participating in the March of the Living, continue his legacy and fight against it today. It is a great honor for me to march together with you on the Jewish Holocaust Remembrance Day.'
Merrill Eisenhower responded, saying, 'There is no greater privilege than continuing the legacy of my great-grandfather, who not only led the liberation of thousands of Jews from a cruel fate but also ensured the world bore witness to the horrors of the Holocaust by ordering everything to be documented. To march in the March of the Living alongside survivors, whose lives were saved thanks to him, is a solemn duty. We must keep telling their stories, stand against Holocaust denial, and fight antisemitism and intolerable in all of its manifestation wherever it appears. I thank the March of the Living organizers for the honor of marching in his footsteps and continuing his his legacy.'
This year's March of the Living, set to take place on Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 24, 2025, will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the death camps in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Thousands of participants from around the world will honor Holocaust survivors and the Allied forces, led by General Eisenhower, who ended Nazi tyranny and brought freedom to millions.
As Clarke and Eisenhower Walk side by side at Auschwitz, their presence will reaffirm a shared commitment: to remember, to educate, and to stand against antisemitism and Holocaust denial, ensuring that history's darkest chapter is never repeated.
Phyllis Greenberg Heideman, President of the March of the Living, told the participants: 'The March of the Living stands as a living testimony to the triumph of memory over forgetfulness. The march of Eva and Merrill, alongside other survivors, is a powerful reminder of why we must continue this fight against denial and distortion. The fact that the great-grandson of the Supreme Commander who liberated Europe will march with us in the 80th year of the liberation is not just symbolic—it continues the legacy of a leader who never forgot what he saw in the Nazi death camps.'
Prominent philanthropists Josh and Marjorie Harris, who co-hosted the event, said: 'We are deeply proud to stand with the March of the Living and the Eisenhower family in this vital mission of remembrance and education. General Eisenhower understood the impact of bearing witness, and that remembering the past is the key to safeguarding the future. At a time when antisemitism is on the rise, that responsibility is more urgent than ever. It is a privilege to lend our voices to this cause, to honor the survivors and liberators, and to ensure that their stories continue to be heard for generations to come.'
Eva Clarke's Story: A Testament to Survival
Born on April 29, 1945, at the gates of Mauthausen concentration camp, Eva Clarke's survival was a miracle. Her mother, Anka Kauderova, endured unimaginable hardships: deported from the Theresienstadt ghetto to Auschwitz while pregnant, she lost her husband, Bernd, to the gas chambers. Transferred to a forced labor camp and then Mauthausen, Anka gave birth while weighing just 32 kilograms, with Eva born at only 1.3 kilograms. Had Eva been born just a day earlier, both mother and child would have been sent to the gas chambers—but the gas had run out.
American forces arrived days later, providing life-saving care to the mother and newborn. Today, Eva is one of only three babies known to have survived being born in Mauthausen. Her story is chronicled in the book Born Survivors, and she continues to share her experiences to ensure the world never forgets.
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Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The 75th anniversary edition of George Orwell's novel 1984, which coined the term "thoughtcrime" to describe the act of having thoughts that question the ruling party's ideology, has become an ironic lightning rod in debates over alleged trigger warnings and the role of historical context in classic literature. The introduction to the new edition, endorsed by Orwell's estate and written by the American author Dolen Perkins-Valdezm, is at the center of the storm, drawing fire from conservative commentators as well as public intellectuals, and prompting a wide spectrum of reaction from academics who study Orwell's work. Perkins-Valdez opens the introduction with a self-reflective exercise: imagining what it would be like to read 1984 for the first time today. She writes that "a sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity," noting the complete absence of Black characters. She also describes her pause at the protagonist Winston Smith's "despicable" misogyny, but ultimately chooses to continue reading, writing: "I know the difference between a flawed character and a flawed story." "I'm enjoying the novel on its own terms, not as a classic but as a good story; that is, until Winston reveals himself to be a problematic character," she writes. "For example, we learn of him: 'He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones.' Whoa, wait a minute, Orwell." That framing was enough to provoke sharp critique from novelist and essayist Walter Kirn on the podcast America This Week, co-hosted with journalist Matt Taibbi. Kirn characterized the foreword as a kind of ideological overreach. "Thank you for your trigger warning for 1984," he said. "It is the most 1984ish thing I've ever f***ing read." In which you will learn that the current leading paperback version of 1984, its official Orwell-estate-approved 75th anniversary edition, includes a 1984-ish trigger-warning introduction calling the novel's hero "problematic" because of his "misogyny." I am not making this up. — Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) June 2, 2025 Later in the episode, which debuted on June 1, Kirn blasted what he saw as an imposed "permission structure" by publishers and academic elites. "It's a sort of Ministry of Truthism," he said, referring to the Ministry of Truth that features prominently in the dystopian novel. "They're giving you a little guidebook to say, 'Here's how you're supposed to feel when you read this.'" Conservative commentator such as Ed Morrissey described the foreword as part of "an attempt to rob [Orwell's work] of meaning by denigrating it as 'problematic.'" Morrissey argued that trigger warnings on literary classics serve to "distract readers at the start from its purpose with red herrings over issues of taste." But not all responses aligned with that view. Academic Rebuttal Peter Brian Rose-Barry, a philosophy professor at Saginaw Valley State University and author of George Orwell: The Ethics of Equality, disputed the entire premise. "There just isn't [a trigger warning]," he told Newsweek in an email after examining the edition. "She never accuses Orwell of thoughtcrime. She never calls for censorship or cancelling Orwell." In Rose-Barry's view, the foreword is neither invasive nor ideological, but reflective. "Perkins-Valdez suggests in her introduction that 'love and artistic beauty can act as healing forces in a totalitarian state,'" he noted. "Now, I find that deeply suspect... but I'd use this introduction to generate a discussion in my class." Taibbi and Kirn, by contrast, took issue with that exact line during the podcast. "Love heals? In 1984?" Taibbi asked. "The whole thing ends with Winston broken, saying he loves Big Brother," the symbol of the totalitarian state at the heart of the book. Kirn laughed and added, "It's the kind of revisionist uplift you get from a book club discussion after someone just watched The Handmaid's Tale." Photographs of Eric Blair, whose pen name was George Orwell, from his Metropolitan Police file, c.1940. Photographs of Eric Blair, whose pen name was George Orwell, from his Metropolitan Police file, c.1940. The National Archives UK Perkins-Valdez, a Black writer, Harvard graduate and professor of literature at American University, also noted the novel's lack of racial representation: "That sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity at all." Kirn responded to that sentiment on the show by pointing out that Orwell was writing about midcentury Britain: "When Orwell wrote the book, Black people made up maybe one percent of the population. It's like expecting white characters in every Nigerian novel." Richard Keeble, former chair of the Orwell Society, argued that critiques of Orwell's treatment of race and gender have long been part of academic discourse. "Questioning Orwell's representation of Blacks in 1984 can usefully lead us to consider the evolution of his ideas on race generally," he told Newsweek. "Yet Orwell struggled throughout his life, and not with complete success, to exorcise what Edward Said called 'Orientalism.'" Keeble added, "Trigger warnings and interpretative forewords... join the rich firmament of Orwellian scholarship—being themselves open to critique and analysis." Cultural Overreach The 75th anniversary edition of George Orwell's 1984 has become a lightning rod in debates over alleged wokeness, censorship and the role of historical context in reading classic literature. The 75th anniversary edition of George Orwell's 1984 has become a lightning rod in debates over alleged wokeness, censorship and the role of historical context in reading classic literature. Newsweek / Penguin Random House While critics like Kirn view Perkins-Valdez's new foreword as a symptom of virtue signaling run amok, others see it as part of a long-standing literary dialogue. Laura Beers, a historian at American University and author of Orwell's Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century, acknowledged that such reactions reflect deeper political divides. But she defended the legitimacy of approaching Orwell through modern ethical and social lenses. "What makes 1984 such a great novel is that it was written to transcend a specific historical context," she told Newsweek. "Although it has frequently been appropriated by the right as a critique of 'socialism,' it was never meant to be solely a critique of Stalin's Russia." Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Courtesy American University "Rather," she added, "it was a commentary on how absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the risk to all societies, including democracies like Britain and the United States, of the unchecked concentration of power." Beers also addressed the role of interpretive material in shaping the reading experience. "Obviously, yes, in that 'interpretive forewords' give a reader an initial context in which to situate the texts that they are reading," she said. "That said, such forewords are more often a reflection on the attitudes and biases of their own time." While the foreword has prompted the familiar battle lines playing out across the Trump-era culture wars, Beers sees the conversation itself as in keeping with Orwell's legacy. "By attempting to place Orwell's work in conversation with changing values and historical understandings in the decades since he was writing," she said, "scholars like Perkins-Valdez are exercising the very freedom to express uncomfortable and difficult opinions that Orwell explicitly championed."
