Esther Bejarano, née Loewy, was born to Jewish parents in the German province of Saarland in 1924. Her family repeatedly tried to emigrate as antisemitism grew increasingly vicious in Germany, but Esther and her parents never managed to get out. Her brother made it to the United States, and one of her sisters emigrated to Palestine.

Following the Nazis’ ban on Jewish schools and other Jewish institutions, Esther was sent to the Ahrensdorf camp, an agricultural colony designed to prepare Jews for emigration to Palestine, and later to the Landwerk Neuendorf camp, where she performed forced labor for florist Fleurop. Esther’s parents were killed by the Nazis in Kaunas, Lithuania. Her second sister Ruth was murdered at the infamous Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz.

The flower shop where Esther had been forced to work was soon shuttered, and Esther was taken to a so-called “transit camp” on Berlin’s Große Hamburger Straße. From there, she was deported to Auschwitz on April 19, 1943 with the 37th Osttransport. A total of 153 people from the Landwerk Neuendorf camp were sent to Auschwitz with her on that day. She survived the horrific journey in the overcrowded cattle wagon, without food, and surrounded by the corpses of other prisoners who had already died. In the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, she was registered as prisoner no. 41948.