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Zoltan Zinn-Collis

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Slovak Holocaust survivor
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Zoltan Zinn-Collis (1940, Vysoké Tatry, Slovakia – 10 December 2012, Athy, Ireland) was a Slovak survivor of the Holocaust. He was one of only five living Holocaust survivors in Ireland. He died in his Athy home in Ireland on 10 December 2012. He thought himself to be born on 1 August 1940, but was not certain.

Family

Zinn-Collis is the son of a Slovak labourer of Jewish descent and a Hungarian Protestant woman. Collis had two sisters and one brother, the youngest sister being killed during the Holocaust at the age of 18 months. Zoltan's brother Aladar developed TB and died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. On 15 April 1945, Zoltan's mother died in Belsen, the same day the Red Cross arrived. His father, Adolf Zinn, who was thought to have died in Ravensbruck in 1944. His older sister, Edith, also survived the Holocaust and was brought to Ireland after the war.

Life in Ireland

The head of the Red Cross was Bob Collis, an Irish doctor. When Dr Collis first gathered Zoltan in his arms, the boy declared in German: "My father is dead. You are now my father." Bob Collis eventually adopted Zoltan and Edith and raised the two orphaned children in Ireland with the support of his wife Phyllis. Zoltan later became the manager of some of Ireland's leading hotels. He married an Irish woman and they raised four daughters together.

Books

  • Zinn-Collis, Zoltan; Alicia McAuley (2006). Final Witness: My Journey from the Holocaust to Ireland. Maverick House. ISBN 978-1905379187.

External links

References

  1. "Zoltan Zinn Collis, the author of Final Witness, remembered". Maverick House. 10 December 2015. Retrieved 1 July 2021.
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