Remembering Margot Schlesinger, Auschwitz Survivor

We are sorry to hear about the recent passing of Jewish Holocaust survivor Margot Schlesinger. The Chicago resident was 99.

Schlesinger gave her testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in 1995.

Born Maria Miriam Wind, on July 24, 1918, she was raised in Berlin. In her interview, she talks about life before the war, and living in a ghetto, before being sent to the Plaszow concentration camp, where she was put to work in Oskar Schindler’s nearby factory. She was among a group of women who were accidentally sent to the Auschwitz death camp.

“We were sent there in the cattle cars by accident,” she told the Chicago Tribune in 1994. “Schindler bribed the camp people, he wanted his women back. … We were the only Jews who ever left Auschwitz alive.”

She is survived by two children, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her husband, Chaskel Schlesinger, preceded her in death.

You can view her testimony at vhaonline.usc.edu.