Judith Magyar Isaacson
| Judith Magyar Isaacson | |
|---|---|
2006 book signing
|
|
| Born |
Judit Magyar July 3, 1925 Kaposvár, Hungary |
| Died | November 10, 2015 (aged 90) Auburn, Maine |
| Education | B.A. mathematics, Bates College (1965) M.A mathematics, Bowdoin College (1967) |
| Occupation | Dean of Women and Dean of Students |
| Years active | 1969–1978 |
| Employer | Bates College |
| Known for | Survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp |
| Notable work | Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor (1990) |
| Spouse(s) | Irving Isaacson |
| Children | 3 |
| Parent(s) | Jeno and Rózsi (Rose) Magyar |
| Awards | Maine Women's Hall of Fame (2004) |
Judith Magyar Isaacson (July 3, 1925 – November 10, 2015) was a Hungarian-American educator, university administrator, speaker, and author.
Born in Hungary into a Jewish family, Isaacson was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp with her mother and aunt in July 1944, where she spent eight months in forced labor in an underground munitions plant in Hessisch Lichtenau. After liberation, she married a United States intelligence officer and moved to his hometown of Lewiston, Maine. She earned bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics in Maine colleges in the mid-1960s and taught at Lewiston High School and Bates College, serving as dean of women and dean of students at the latter institution. Her 1990 memoir, Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor, inspired a 1995 electronic chamber opera and a 1998 experimental film.
The recipient of numerous awards and three honorary degrees, Isaacson was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2004.
Born Judit Magyar in Kaposvár, Hungary, she was the daughter of Jeno and Rózsi (Rose) Magyar. She attended the gimnazium (high school) in that city and was valedictorian of her graduating class. Her plans to study literature at the Sorbonne were halted by the Nazi occupation of Hungary in March 1944. In May she and her family were incarcerated in a ghetto, from which her father and uncles were taken for forced labor. On July 2, 1944, one day before her nineteenth birthday, she was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp with her mother, grandmothers, and aunts. While her grandmothers and one aunt were immediately sent to the gas chamber, she managed to stay together with her mother and another aunt, Magda Rosenberger. Her father was transported to a Hungarian labor camp and from there to the Buchenwald concentration camp; at the end of the war, he died of starvation at the Mühldorf subcamp.
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