My mother protected me in Ravensbrück. She would work in additional commandos for an extra ration of soup that she gave me. I learned to read and write; I learned the multiplication tables in the most difficult circumstances. My mother told me, “You will need this in your life”. That was magical. That meant, “you will survive”.
Ivan Lefkovits was born in Prešov (today’s Slovakia), in 1937. In the fall of 1944, Ivan, his mother Elisabeth, and his brother Paul were deported
to Ravensbrück. While he was allowed to stay with his mother, his older brother Paul, who was 15, was separated from them, taken to the men’s
camp and later murdered. Ivan survived along with his mother. Ivan Lefkovits came to Basel in 1969 as a professor to establish the new Institute for Immunology. He is married, has a son and two grandchildren.