Frances Irwin, a Polish-born Holocaust survivor who frequently spoke to school groups about her wartime experience, died in Brooklyn on May 3 at 93.
She was the sole survivor from a large chasidic family; she hid in the woods for two years, and was interned in Auschwitz another two.
Mrs. Irwin, who weighed 60 pounds when liberated from Auschwitz in 1945, later immigrated to the United States, where she studied at Kingsborough Community College. She became a nurse, eventually spending one day each week speaking at schools about the Holocaust, a practice that became a fulltime job after she retired.
An active supporter of UJA-Federation of New York, she was a board member of Brooklyn College’s Hillel chapter, where she helped establish Project Hope, which delivers Holiday food packages to needy seniors during Passover and Chanukah.
She told her life’s story in “Remember to Be a Good Human Being: a Memoir of Life and the Holocaust,” which was published in 2005 by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project.