When Elizabeth Ungar Lefkovits was 20 years old in June of 1944, she was separated from most of her family, never to see them again. She was forced on a train with 100 people packed into a cattle car for a 10-day journey, having to feed her 2-year-old nephew the little food she had brought with them.

Lefkovits endured about a year and a half of deplorable conditions in the Auschwitz concentration camp before escaping with two other women in January of 1945. She managed to avoid returning to the camp, but not without peril.

According to Lefkovits’ biography provided by The Brenan Museum, she hid in a pile of straw inside a barn while German soldiers thrust their bayonets searching for the escapees.

She would eventually be captured but was released rather than taken to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and managed to return to Hungary after liberation.

Once back in her home town, she discovered both her parents and her two sisters, along with 83 members of her extended family, had been murdered in concentration camps.

It’s a journey that tells an extraordinary story of how her faith kept her alive, and how a lack of humanity altered the world.

Lefkovits is sharing that story at Covington First United Methodist Church Sunday starting at 2 p.m.

Covington FUMC Youth Pastor Jennifer Morganthall learned of Lefkovits and her story at The Breman Museum in Atlanta, preparing her youth group for a trip to Europe in June.

Every year, a group of FUMC high school junior and seniors go on an educational trip and get to choose what they wish to study. This year’s group wanted to learn more about the Holocaust and the plight of Europe in the 1940s.

Thirteen students are going on this year’s trip to Pompeii, Rome, Florence, Venice, Munich and Salzburg, Austria to learn about early Christianity.

Sunday’s lecture from Lefkovits serves as a fundraiser for the trip at $5 per ticket. Lefkovits will speak starting at 2 p.m. and will take questions for about 15 minutes after her presentation.