Survivor Profiles: Marguerite Mishkin
The essence of the Museum is a gift and a message from the survivors to future generations. The gift: The opportunity to experience history through testimonies and artifacts. The message: to fight intolerance wherever and whenever it exists.
Marguerite Mishkin
Her Story:
Marguerite Mishkin was a hidden child of the Holocaust. She was born to Jewish parents in Belgium in 1941. Her father was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp the year after Marguerite’s birth and died there. Knowing that Marguerite and her older sister Annette were in great danger, their mother approached the Belgian Resistance movement for help. Through the Resistance, she was able to send her children into hiding with a rural Belgian Catholic family in 1943. They remained with that family until 1946. Meanwhile, in 1944, Marguerite’s mother was captured and sent to Auschwitz, where she perished. After the war, Marguerite and her sister were removed from the Belgian family’s care and sent to a Jewish orphanage in Brussels. From there, they were both adopted by a Chicago rabbi and his wife in 1950. Marguerite grew up in Chicago, graduated from Roosevelt University, and became a teacher. Now retired, she often speaks about the Holocaust to school, college, and community groups.