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Edith Zinn-Collis (F / Slovakia, 1937), Holocaust survivor

• One of the Bergen-Belsen children brought to Ireland by dr. Bob Collis.

• KEYWORDS : <Ravensbruck> <Bergen-Belsen> <Liberation of Bergen-Belsen> -- <Ireland>
• MEMOIRS : Final Witness (2006)

Biography

Zinn-Collis was the son of a Slovak labourer of Jewish descent and a Hungarian Protestant woman. Collis had two sisters and one brother, the youngest sister being killed during the Holocaust at the age of 18 months. Zoltan's brother Aladar developed TB and died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. On April 15, 1945, Zoltan's mother died in Belsen, the same day the Red Cross arrived. His father, Adolf Zinn, was thought to have died in Ravensbruck in 1944. His older sister, Edith, also survived the Holocaust.

The two orphan children were adopted by the Irish doctor, Bob Collis, who met them at Bergen-Belsen after liberation.

Book : Final Witness (2006)

{en} Zoltan Zinn-Collis. Final Witness: My Journey from the Holocaust to Ireland (Dunshaughlin: Maverick House, 2006).

• See Zoltan Zinn-Collis (M / Slovakia, 1940-2012), Holocaust survivor

Abstract

"At the age of five, Zoltan Zinn-Collis was torn from his home in Slovakia and cast into the deepest horrors of a Nazi concentration camp. In Bergen-Belsen concentration camp he survived the inhuman brutality of the Ss guards, the ravages of near starvation, disease, and squalor. All but one of his family died there, his mother losing her life on the very day the British finally marched into the camp. Discovered by a Red Cross nurse who described him as 'an enchanting scrap of humanity', Zoltan was brought to Ireland and adopted by one of the liberators, Dr Bob Collis, who raised him as his own son on Ireland's east coast. Now aged 65, Zoltan is ready to speak. His story is one of deepest pain and greatest joy. Zoltan tells how he lost one family and found another; of how, escaping from the ruins of a broken Europe, he was able to build himself a life – a life he may never have had.--Publisher description.

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