From Slovak Teacher to Auschwitz Prisoner (Part 1): Magda Hellinger:
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Before the number 2318 was tattooed on her arm, Magda Hellinger was a devoted kindergarten teacher and youth leader in Michalovce, Slovakia — a young woman whose kindness and integrity inspired everyone around her. But when Slovakia embraced Nazi ideology, antisemitic laws stripped her community of dignity, property, and finally freedom. In 1942, Magda was among the very first Jewish women deported to Auschwitz, betrayed by a neighbor and torn from her family.
This first episode follows Magda’s path from an ordinary life filled with compassion and purpose to the inhuman world of cattle cars and roll calls — the moment when a teacher of children became a prisoner in the largest killing center of the Third Reich.
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