Zahava Szász Stessel

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Zahava Szász Stessel (* 1930 in Abaújszántó as Zahava Szász ) is a Hungarian-American librarian and survivor of the Holocaust .

Life

Zahavicsku Szász grew up in a wine-growing community in Tokaj-Hegyalja . On April 16, 1944, the Eichmann Kommando and his Hungarian helpers deported her family to Kassa and from there to the Auschwitz concentration camp . Here the family was separated and all family members except her and her sister, who was born in 1931, were murdered.

The sisters came to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and from there to the Markkleeberg forced labor camp, a women's subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp , for which they pretended to be older than they would have been murdered as children. More than 1000 Hungarian Jews and 250 French resistance fighters were held prisoner in the camp between August 1944 and April 1945 and had to do forced labor in the armaments industry for the Junkers aircraft and engine factories . On April 13, 1945, the prisoners were sent on a death march , which the sisters survived.

After the end of the war, they first returned to Hungary. Since there was no family member left alive, they ended up in the children's camp for displaced persons in Kloster Indersdorf in Bavaria , from where they drove to Sète in southern France in January 1947 . Their illegal immigration to Palestine was initially unsuccessful because they were prevented from landing and were interned in Cyprus by the British .

In Israel she married and took the name Zahava Szász Stessel. In 1957 she emigrated to the USA with her husband. Szász Stessel worked in a city library in New York City after completing his studies . She did her PhD at the age of 61 . She published research on the history of Hungarian Jews.

In her book “Snow Flowers” ​​she describes daily life in the Markkleeberg forced labor camp and examines the structures of violence.

Szász Stessel was granted honorary citizenship of the city on April 16, 2008 on the occasion of her visit to Markkleeberg .

Fonts

  • Snow flowers: Hungarian Jewish women in an airplane factory, Markkleeberg, Germany . Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 2009
  • Wine and thorns in Tokay Valley: Jewish life in Hungary: the history of Abaújszántó . Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1995
  • Jewish life in Hungary: the history of Abaújszántó . Thesis (Ph. D.), New York University, 1991.

literature

  • Howard Lupovitch: Wine and Thorns in the Tokay Valley: Jewish Life in Hungary; The History of Abaújszántó. Review . AJS Review (Association for Jewish Studies), 1998, pp. 307-315

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Zahava Stessel , short biography in the town of Markkleeberg
  2. ↑ Szász, Zahava 'Zahavicsku' in Haapalah / Aliyah Bet
personal data
SURNAME Szász Stessel, Zahava
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian-American author
DATE OF BIRTH 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Abaújszántó , Hungary