Miriam Ezagui is one of TikTok’s most high-profile Jewish influencers. The Orthodox labor and delivery nurse has gotten a lot of love on the social media platform, where she shares the details of Jewish observances, baby-wearing tips and anecdotes about her grandmother, Lily Malnik, a Holocaust survivor, to her almost 2 million followers. She’s also faced a lot of antisemitism on the platform, though that’s never seemed to daunt her.
As she told JTA back in May of 2023, “When people are trolling my account, I’m not afraid to call them out, but I don’t want to make [my account] all about that,” she said. “But when I do call out, I like to do them in a tasteful way.”
One such call out happened most recently in a video she shared in honor of Yom Hashoah, the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day. Ezagui was sent by TikTok on a March of the Living tour where she visited Auschwitz, the same camp that her grandmother Lily — who she calls Bubby — survived.
@miriamezagui Replying to @🍉 Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Today we remember that goodness will always prevail over evil. #yomhashoah #holocaustrembrance #marchoftheliving #motl2024 #holocaust
Ezagui, who is due with her fifth child this summer, shot a video in response to a commenter who wrote that “my prayers is to go back in time and for ur bubby to not make it so u would never be here.” The user had a display name with a watermelon emoji, a sign some use to show their solidarity with Palestine.
“I am here in Auschwitz, the concentration camp that my bubby was imprisoned at,” she shared with viewers, “and I am here to tell you that evil existed then, and it still exists now,” she continued, pointing to the comment on the screen.
“But so does goodness and kindness and because of that I am alive before you, and I stand before you, with new life inside of my womb, because goodness will always prevail over evil,” she finished, showing her pregnant belly as she stands on the grounds of Auschwitz on a bright spring day.
When she started her journey on the March of the Living, Ezagui, 37, called her bubby to surprise her with the news that she was visiting Auschwitz.
Malnik, who was born in Belgium and grew up in Antwerp and Brussels, was 15 years old when she arrived at Auschwitz, the camp that took the life of many of her relatives, including her mother, siblings, aunt and uncles. She survived the death march and was liberated from Bergen-Belsen in April of 1945, arriving to the States in 1947. There, she met and married her husband, Abraham Malnik, a fellow Holocaust survivor who was born in Lithuania. Together, they helped start the United States Holocaust Museum.
Ezagui called Malnik from Budapest, her first stop on the trip, and her grandmother started the conversation by telling her granddaughter how beautiful she looked. Ezagui then shared that, “I am going to Auschwitz. I never thought I would be doing this.”
“You give me chills, that I survived to know and to see that my granddaughter is going over to the place where I lost my whole family,” she told Ezagui over FaceTime, asking her to “think of your family, darling, that we lost there.”
“You look gorgeous, bubaleh, I love you,” her grandmother said, before ending the call with a “zei gezunt” — “be healthy” in Yiddish, the same language that Malnik grew up speaking with her grandparents back in Antwerp.
@miriamezagui Calling my Bubby to tell her TikTok is taking me on March of the Living. #marchoftheliving #motl2024 #bubby #auchwitz
