International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Survivor recounts how mother saved her life, reveals message to UN

A Holocaust survivor who described the genocide as the most “horrifying” and “unbelievable part of human history” tells Fox News Digital that she will spread a message of “don’t hate, love,” when she addresses the U.N. General Assembly on Monday. 

Marianne Miller was born in Budapest, Hungary, during World War II and traveled from Israel to speak in New York City on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. During the Holocaust, Miller says she was in her mother’s arms when she managed to escape a line of women marching toward a railway station, where a train was waiting to take them to Auschwitz. 

“I am a survivor of the Holocaust. I can still say in first pronoun, ‘I have been there,'” Miller told Fox News Digital. “Every day, Holocaust survivors are leaving us and there will be only very few left.” 

“It didn’t happen in the Middle Ages. It happened only 80 years ago,” she added. “I came to represent 6 million people that can’t tell their stories.” 

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Miller said on one “cold, freezing December night” in 1944, her mom came up with a plan that ultimately saved both their lives. 

“There is a quiet march of mothers holding their children. The direction is the railway station and the destiny is Auschwitz,” Miller said. “I am in the arms of my mother, and then she does something that nobody before her and after her did.” 

Miller recalled how her mother tore off the yellow star she was wearing and then ran out of the line, hiding under a gate and thinking that nobody saw her. 

“There was a young, Hungarian Nazi, maybe 18 or 19 years old, running after her with hatred in his eyes, pointing his gun at her chest, swearing at her and telling her ‘how did you dare to tear off the yellow star,” Miller said, adding that the soldier threatened to kill her and make her mother rejoin the line without her. 

Miller told Fox News Digital that her mother then took off her golden wedding ring and offered it to the soldier. 

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“Look, this little baby. She’s sleeping peacefully in my arms. She didn’t do anything to you. Please let me go. Take this ring,” Miller recalled her mother saying in the moment. 

“The young Nazi was turning the ring around in his hand. Maybe in this minute, he found a tiny bit of humanity or mercy,” Miller added. “My mother ran away into the darkness. And he didn’t follow her. 

“We were saved,” Miller said, describing the scene as one of “the many miracles that I am here today and can tell my story.” 

Last year, Miller appeared alongside her son Adir Miller — an Israeli comedian — in “The Ring,” a film inspired by her story.  

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Miller also participated in the International March of the Living, an annual Holocaust remembrance event and educational program. The nonprofit says she “shared her story of survival with thousands of participants joining commemorative marches through both Budapest in Hungary and Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland” and there “she expressed her dream of addressing world leaders at the U.N. to tell her story.” 

It helped arrange Miller’s visit to U.N. headquarters, where she is expected to speak to more than 1,000 people. 

Miller told Fox News Digital that “the Holocaust was the most horrifying, ugliest, most terrible, most unbelievable part of the human history” and “God has created men to love, not to hate.” 

“The Holocaust should never, never, never again happen,” Miller said, describing what her message will be to the U.N. “Never again. Never again. And please help us bring back our hostages. Don’t hate. Don’t hate, love.”