| Zirrel Schwab | |
 | |
| Birth: | February 1914 |
| Death: | 25 November 2020 Petah Tikva, Israel |
| Age: | 106 years, 301+ days |
| Country: |  ISR
|
| Centenarian | |
Zirrel Schwab (February 1914 – 25 November 2020) was an Israeli centenarian who was one of oldest Holocaust survivors in Israel. She was also one of the oldest known living people in Israel at time of her death.
Biography[]
Zirrel Schwab was born in February 1914. She married Avraham Schwab and had two sons: Eliezer Schwab and Reuven Schwab (1945–c.1972).
Holocaust survival[]
She lived with her family in Budapest, Hungary until the arrival of the Nazis during the World War II. Her family hid in the basement of the gentile who ran the building where they lived. After about a month, her family was expelled from the basement, after the landlady feared for her life. She left her then-4-year-old son in a convent at her mother's request, but picked him up shortly after.
In January 1945, the Germans raided the ghetto in order to blow it up for all its inhabitants and began leading some of the Jews in the death march towards the Danube River in order to execute them. On the way to the Danube, one of the officers decided to split our group in two, he said the Danube was already full of dead and there was no room for more dead and he took her family back to the Budapest Ghetto and so they survived.
A few months later, the ghetto was occupied by the Russians, who dismantled the fences and mines and liberated the Jews. About a month after the release, her husband was released and the family reunited.
Life in Israel[]
She along with her husband, son and three sisters moved to their parents' ruined house. Her mother who was with she in the ghetto died after contract typhoid.
In 1945, after leaving the ghetto, she had other son Reuven, who died at the age of 27 from an illness in Israel. She moved with her family to Israel in 1947. Her husband Avraham died at the age of 78.
As of April 2020, she had one living son Eliezer Schwab (aged 80 in November 2020), who is also a Holocaust survivor; three grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.
Zirrel Schwab died in Petah Tikva, Israel on 25 November 2020 at the age of at least 106 years, 301 days.
References[]
- גם בגיל 105 צירל שוולב זוכרת כל דקה מהגטו בבודפשט ומהמסע ההפכפך לארץ Melabes, 21 April 2020
- "זה חנוכה ראשון שאני מדליק נרות בלי אמא". הלכה לעולמה צירל שוולב, שורדת שואה בת 106 Melabes, 14 December 2020