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Gisela Dollinger
Gisela Dollinger
Dollinger (aged 111) with her great-great-great-grandniece.
Birth: 30 August 1902
Baden bei Wien, Austria-Hungary (now Austria)
Death: 10 March 2014
Manhattan, New York City, New York State, USA
Age: 111 years, 192 days
Country: AustriaAUTUnited StatesUSA
Validated

Gisela "Gisa" Dollinger (née Kohn; 30 August 1902 – 10 March 2014) was an Austrian-American supercentenarian whose age is validated by the Gerontology Research Group (GRG).

Biography[]

Gisela Dollinger was born in Baden bei Wien, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) on 30 August 1902 as the youngest of 15 children. Her parents were Jakob Kohn and Esther Anna (née Reisch) Kohn. She married Bernard Dollinger but never had children.

Soon after Kristallnacht, when she was 36, Dollinger persuaded the Gestapo to release her husband from the Dachau concentration camp, and the two of them fled Austria for Shanghai, where she almost died of typhoid.

In Shanghai, Gisela and her husband Bernard lived in the crowded and impoverished ghetto to which stateless refugees were restricted, and Gisela worked for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which was distributing clothing and other aid there.

In December 1948, Gisela and her husband Bernard departed China for Israel. Since Bernard had sisters in the United States, the couple moved to New York in 1950. She was widowed in 1993 after more than 60 years of marriage.

In 2005 at the age of 103, she returned to Austria for the first time since she and her husband, Bernard, had fled in December 1938.

Dollinger died at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in Manhattan, New York City, New York State, USA on 10 March 2014 at the age of 111 years, 192 days. She was survived by numerous nieces, nephews, cousins, great-nieces and great-nephews, great-great-nieces and great-great-nephews, great-great-great-nieces and great-great-great-nephews.

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