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Magda Brown

A Survivor Speaks

Magda Brown, who was 17 when she and her family were sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1944, joins us to share her story of survival.

Magda Brown is from Miskolc, Hungary. In 1944, when she was 17 years old, she was deported on one of the final transports to Auschwitz-Birkenau with her entire family. 

Her parents died in gas chambers. Her brother was the only one to survive; he served in the Hungarian military’s Jewish labor force and was captured and imprisoned by the Russian army.

In August of 1944, she was deported to Munchmuhle, Stadt Allendorf, Germany, where she worked in an ammunition factory that produced bombs and rockets. She was one of only 1,000 prisoners from Birkenau chosen for this job.

In March 1945, she was sent on a death march from the factory for three days. She was eventually liberated in a nearby forest by the Sixth Armored Division of the US Army. In 1946, she came to America and settled in Chicago.

Photo Copyright IHMEC/John Pregulman

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