Moved by her story, Pope Francis visits Holocaust survivor Edith Bruck at home in Rome

(JTA) — Pope Francis was so moved by reading the testimony of a local Holocaust survivor that he paid the nearly 90-year-old writer a house call this weekend.

The pope visited Edith Bruck, who was born in Hungary and survived multiple Nazi concentration camps, at her home in Rome on Saturday, the Vatican announced.

After moving to Italy in 1954, following stints in Czechoslovakia and Israel, Bruck emerged as a leading contributor to Italian Holocaust literature. She wrote extensively but not exclusively about her experience before and during the Holocaust, publishing works of nonfiction, fiction and poetry, including a memoir called “Signora Auschwitz” that explored her role in keeping Italy’s Holocaust memory.