Irene Zisblatt

Irene Zegelstein was born on 28 December 1929, in the resort town of Polyana, in what is now Zakarpattia Oblast in Ukraine, in a house with no electricity. Her father was a co-owner of a spa, and her mother was a housewife. Around 1939, at the age of nine, she was expelled from school, since Jewish people were forbidden to leave their houses after six in the evening or before eight in the morning.

On the second night of Passover, April 8 1944, she and her family were sent to the Munkács ghetto, which, according to Zisblatt, consisted of a former brick factory surrounded by a fence. All houses were already full, so her family built a small tent from the tablecloths they had in their suitcases, and that's where they slept.

Some time later, she and her family were deceived into believing that they were being transferred to work in the vineyards in Tokaj, Hungary. Instead, they were sent on a train to the Auschwitz concentration camp. She was immediately separated from her family and she was the only one of her 40 family members to survive the gas chambers. Everyone older than 45 or younger than 15 was sent immediately to the gas chambers. Her entire family was gassed up in Gas Chamber No. 2, including her parents. Before leaving, her mother gave her four diamonds to purchase bread. However, not wanting to accept the soldiers' request to put valuables inside bags, Zisblatt swallowed the diamonds, which her mother had sewn into her dress. She later stated that she then recovered the diamonds from her feces. After cleaning the diamonds, she repeated the process on many occasions when she was selected for testing by Josef Mengele.[2]

With the help of another prisoner, she was able to escape Auschwitz by getting on a train traveling across tracks running near the No. 3 gas chamber. The train took her to the Neuengamme concentration camp in Germany where shortly after she was forced to go on a "death march" as the war wound down. After marching for days upon days Zisblatt states that she and her friend escaped during a dark night as they stood between two forests. The next day, they were found by American soldiers. Her friend later died from disease the following day. She was adopted to an American family two years later.

Zisblatt was one of five Hungarian Holocaust survivors whose story was featured in the 1999 Academy Award-winning documentary movie, The Last Days directed by Steven Spielberg.[3] The documentary follows Zisblatt as she and her daughter travel back to sites of memory, including Zisblatt's childhood town, which she had not seen since her deportation in 1944. Zisblatt also visited the ghetto she was formerly placed in, before she was deported to Auschwitz.

Zisblatt now lives in Florida. She has a son Mark (born circa 1957), a daughter, Robin (born circa 1963), and five grandchildren. She frequently makes visits to American schools to talk about her personal Holocaust experiences.