Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Auschwitz Survivor Crowned ‘Miss Holocaust’

Shoshana Colmer, 93, a survivor of Auschwitz, was crowned Miss Holocaust at a contest in Haifa.

The second annual Miss Holocaust Survivor Beauty Contest was held Aug. 22 at the Municipal Sports Complex before an audience of thousands.

More than 300 women from Israel and around the world applied to participate in the contest, according to Haaretz. Colmer told the audience that she sang one song to a Nazi guard each morning in Auschwitz in return for an extra piece of bread. She was liberated after taking part in a death march from the camp.

Dr. Izabella Grinberg, a geriatric psychiatrist, and Shimon Sabag, director of Yad Ezer L’Haver, an organization that assists Holocaust survivors, developed the contest. It is designed to help the contestants and the survivors watching to come to grips with their survival and boost their self esteem.

Check out a video about the inaugural pageant, which took place last year:

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.