Holocaust survivor in Charlotte dies at 82

By HILDEGARD SCHEIBNER

Nov 20, 2004

www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041120/NEWS/411200428/1006/SPORTS

DEEP CREEK — Margaret B. Baker, who survived four years of slave labor in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, died of heart disease on Nov. 18, 2004. She was 82.

“In 1939, when she was 18, the Germans invaded Poland, and everyone in her village of Szamocin age 18 to 35 was sent into forced labor,” said Ivan, her husband of 68 years. “She worked six months on a farm and then was sent to Auschwitz to load coal cars.”

[…]

“She told me that she lived in a barracks with 80 women, and 90 percent of them gave up and died,” her husband said, “but she was determined to stay alive no matter how horrible it was.”

When the Russians invaded Poland and defeated the Germans, she fled on foot to Berlin, where she knew a Polish family.

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