Ginette Kolinka is sharing her firsthand insight of murderous hatred and inhumanity.
Ginette Kolinka, a 101-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, smiles after a meeting with pupils in a Paris-region high school in Saint-Maur-des-Fosses, outside Paris, France, March 21, 2026. Iran remains a stubborn foe after absorbing massive US-Israeli attacks“’If I had a child, well, I would prefer to strangle them with my own hands than make them go through what I went through,’” she’d tell them.
Now, at the tail end of a remarkably long and fruitful life, the feisty 101-year-old with an easy and generous smile has become a mighty warrior against antisemitism in France, seeing purpose in sharing her firsthand insight of murderous hatred and inhumanity.aren’t forgotten. So people who tune in to the countless interviews she gives cannot say that they didn’t know about the death camps and the extermination of 6 million European Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators. So school pupils who are thrilled to meet and listen to Kolinka inherit and embrace the duty of remembrance.Kolinka credits Steven Spielberg for helping to precipitate her decision 30 years ago to start opening up about the mental and physical scars that she buried for decades, the survivor’s guilt that tormented her, the eternal regret of goodbye kisses that she didn’t get to give to her father, Léon, and 12-year-old brother, Gilbert, before Nazi guards sent to them to the gas chambers, and so many other cruelties.to collect testimonies from Holocaust survivors. When it contacted Kolinka, she was reticent, replying that talking to her would be a waste of time, she recounts in “Return to Birkenau,” her memoir.“For the first time, I found myself compelled to think about it again,” Kolinka says in her book, published in 2019. In World War II, Nazi-occupied France deported 76,000 Jewish men, women and children, mostly to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Just 2,500 survived. It took France’s leadership 50 years to officially acknowledge the state’s involvement in the Holocaust, when then-President Jacques Chirac in 1995 described French complicity as an indelible stain on the nation. Through her books, media appearances and school visits, Kolinka has become the most prominent remaining French survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Just a few dozen, perhaps fewer than 30, are still alive, according to the Paris-based Union of Auschwitz Deportees, a survivors’ group. Ginette Kolinka, a 101-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, during a meeting with pupils in a Paris-region high school in Saint-Maur-des-Fosses, outside Paris, France, March 21, 2026. Ginette Kolinka, a 101-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, makes a phone call after she met some pupils in a Paris-region high school in Saint-Maur-des-Fosses, outside Paris, France, March 21, 2026. Ginette Kolinka, a 101-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, during a meeting with pupils in a Paris-region high school in Saint-Maur-des-Fosses, outside Paris, France, March 21, 2026. Ginette Kolinka, a 101-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, smiles after a meeting with pupils in a Paris-region high school in Saint-Maur-des-Fosses, outside Paris, France, March 21, 2026. Ginette Kolinka, a 101-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, arrives to meet pupils in a Paris-region high school in Saint-Maur-des-Fosses, outside Paris, France, March 21, 2026. Ginette Kolinka, a 101-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, during a meeting with pupils in a Paris-region high school in Saint-Maur-des-Fosses, outside Paris, France, March 21, 2026. Pupils hung on her every word when Kolinka dropped by the Marcelin Berthelot high school east of Paris recently to tell her story for the umpteenth time, with The Associated Press also present. Even the abbreviated version, squeezed into roughly 90 minutes, makes for tough listening — from her arrest in March 1944 to her return to France, skeletal and traumatized, after She described how she and other Jews were crammed aboard windowless animal-transport wagons in Paris and the violence and cruelty, with Nazi guards screaming orders and dogs barking, that greeted them at the other end three days later at Auschwitz-Birkenau. In her memoir, Kolinka says that the first German word she learned was “Schnell!” — meaning “Move it!” The pupils listened in pin-drop silence as Kolinka explained that they were forced to strip naked and how that had been torture for the demure 19-year-old she was at the time. “The Nazis’ hatred of Jews was such that they hunted for every detail that could make us suffer, humiliate us,” she said. Then, Kolinka rolled up her left sleeve so pupils could see the identification number — 78599 — that a camp orderly tattooed on her forearm.With time short and perhaps to spare their young imaginations, Kolinka didn’t tell the teenagers that most of the 1,499 men, women and children transported with her to Auschwitz-Birkenau in convoy No. 71 from Paris were killed on arrival. Kolinka was among a couple of hundred who were kept back from the gas chambers and crematoriums to be used instead as forced labor. As a prisoner, Kolinka used to watch subsequent trains being unloaded, knowing that those aboard would soon be dead.After her talk, a group of them gathered around Kolinka to keep chatting and ask more questions, giving her rock-star treatment, not wanting the encounter to end. Nour Benguella, 17, and Saratou Soumahoro, 19, were giddy with admiration. Simultaneously, they reached for the same word to describe Kolinka: “Extraordinary.” “An amazing woman. It’s wonderful to have her here in front of us. This strength of testimony, her mental fortitude,” Benguella said. ‘Character of our community is diminished’: Borrego Springs group asks for short-term rental regulationsSan Diego loses population as immigration nosedives. What are the consequences?San Diego’s USS Boxer stops in Hawaii en route to transporting Camp Pendleton Marines to Middle EastIts schools are falling apart, and voters won’t pass a bond. Could a little-used tactic help this district?Santee fire that prompted evacuations at shopping center charred 5 acres
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Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor Ginette Kolinka reflects on Nazi horrors at 101A 101-year-old survivor of Auschwitz has, with help from Steven Spielberg, become a mighty warrior against antisemitism in France. With books, media appearances and school visits, Ginette Kolinka has devoted the later part of her long and fruitful life to sharing her firsthand insight of murderous hatred and inhumanity.
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