Margit Feldman (1929–2020)

Margit Feldman, née Buchhalter, was born to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary. Her parents were Theresa and Joseph Buchhalter. When she was 14, Nazi Germany invaded her country in World War II. Her family was taken from their home in the small town of Tolcsva, and moved to a ghetto in another town. In April 1944, they were deported to the death camp at Auschwitz. Margit's parents were killed immediately in the gas chambers. She helped save herself by lying to the German guards, telling them she was 18 years old, and was assigned to forced labor in a quarry in Kraków, Poland. Later, she was sent back to Auschwitz and then to a women's labor camp at Gruenberg, where she met Gerda Weissmann Klein. Margit took part in the death march from Gruenberg to Bergen-Belsen, and survived to be liberated by British troops in April 1945. At that time, she was suffering from pleurisy and pneumonia, as well as injuries she sustained from explosions that were set off by the departing German soldiers in an attempt to destroy the camp. She went to Sweden to recover and then immigrated to the USA in 1947. She settled in New York City, where she lived with her aunt, Harriet Boehm, and cousins. She trained as an x-ray technician. In 1953, she married Harvey Feldman, whom she met while hospitalized for tuberculosis. The couple had two children and lived in Bound Brook, New Jersey. Mrs. Feldman did not speak publicly about her Holocaust experiences for many years. Eventually, in the 1970s, she realized the importance of sharing her story and began her work as a Holocaust educator. She co-founded the Raritan Valley Community College Institute for Holocaust & Genocide Studies in 1981. She also co-founded the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education in 1991 with then-state assemblyman Jim McGreevey and served on it until her death. She helped pass a 1994 bill that required a Holocaust and genocide curriculum in New Jersey public schools. In 2003, she published her autobiography, Margit: A Teenager's Journey Through the Holocaust and Beyond, written with Bernard Weinstein. She was the subject of a 2016 documentary film entitled Not A23029, directed by Peppy Margolis.