Israel’s oldest Holocaust survivor Nechama Grossman dies on Remembrance Day, aged 109
Her son urges people to ‘remember her survival, so that her past never becomes our future’; Holocaust survivor and educator Eve Kugler, 94, also dies on Remembrance Day
Israel’s oldest known Holocaust survivor, Nechama Grossman, died on Thursday at age 109, as the country marked Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Her funeral was held Friday in Arad, where she lived most of her life.
Grossman was born in 1915, and after fleeing Europe, she settled in the Israeli southern city, where she started a family.
According to the Kan broadcaster, Grossman is survived by two children, four grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren.
Her son, Vladimir Schwatz, spoke about her at a Holocaust Remembrance event earlier this week, just before she died.
“My mother is one of the oldest Holocaust survivors in the world,” he said. “She experienced the worst and she survived. We must all remember her Holocaust story, remember her survival, so that her past never becomes our future.”
Also on Thursday, Eve Kugler, another Holocaust survivor, died at 94 in London.
We are saddened by the passing of Holocaust survivor and educator Eve Kugler BEM.
Eve dedicated her life to sharing her powerful testimony and educating generations about the horrors of the Holocaust. Her courage, resilience, and unwavering commitment to remembrance left an… pic.twitter.com/PL8wP9zw2z
— European Jewish Congress (@eurojewcong) April 24, 2025
Kugler had been set to participate in the March of the Living, which took place at Auschwitz on Thursday, but ultimately did not travel to Poland for the event.
She participated in multiple March of the Living events, including last year.
Kugler was born in 1931 in Germany and witnessed the Nazi Kristallnacht rampage when she was 7, before the family fled to France 1939.
In 1941, she was granted passage to the United States aboard a ship and lived in foster homes with her siblings in New York until the rest of her family was able to join them in 1946 after the war ended.
Kugler graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and later worked as a photojournalist.
Later in her life, she moved to London, where she became a prominent educator about the Holocaust and the horrors of the Nazi regime, regularly giving speeches and attending events honoring those who lost their lives in the genocide.
The Times of Israel Community.