Isabelle Choko (née Izabela Sztrauch Galewska, 18 September 1928 – 21 July 2023) was a Polish-French concentration camp survivor and chess player who won the 1956 French Women's Chess Championship.

Biography

Isabelle Choko was born in Łódź, Poland on 18 September 1928. She and her parents were driven out of their pharmacy and sent to the

Łódź Ghetto The Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto (after the Nazi German name for Łódź) was a Nazi ghetto established by the German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the Invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of Ge ...

established in 1940. Her father died in February 1942 of deprivation and hunger. During the summer of 1944, the ghetto was liquidated and Isabelle Choko and her mother were sent to

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

where she was selected in a working

kommando A ''Kommando'' (, "unit" or "command") is a general term for special police and military forces in German, Dutch, and Afrikaans speaking nations. It was also the term in the World War II era ''Luftwaffe'' for special units used to test new air ...

. In February 1945, during the evacuation of Auschwitz, she was sent to

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp Bergen-Belsen , or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concent ...

where her mother died. Weakened by

typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure. ...

, she was saved by an American army doctor when the camp was liberated. At that time, she weighed only 25 kg. She was sent to Sweden to regain her health before joining one of her uncles in Paris in 1946. In Paris, she met Arthur Choko whom she married and with whom she has three children. She became French women's chess champion in 1956. At the beginning of the 2000s, she decided to testify about the deportation by publishing her autobiography ''Mes deux vies'' with the editions Caractères. She will be one of the 52,000 surviving witnesses of the Shoah filmed by the

Shoah Foundation USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, formerly Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Hol ...

as well as for the documentary ''Les Survivants'' by Patrick Rotman. Choko played for France in the

Women's Chess Olympiad The Women's Chess Olympiad is an event held by FIDE (the International Chess Federation) since 1957 (every two years since 1972), where national women's teams compete at chess for gold, silver and bronze medals. Since 1976 the Women's Chess Olympia ...

: * In 1957, at second board in the 1st Chess Olympiad (women) in Emmen (+4, =3, -4). Isabelle Choko died on 21 July 2023, at the age of 94.

Awards

* French female chess champion in 1956 * Knight (2007) then officer of the

Legion of Honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon, ...

(2016)

Publications

* Isabelle Choko, La Jeune Fille aux yeux bleus, éditions Le Manuscrit / Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, coll. « Témoignages de la Shoah », 2014, 402 p. () * Isabelle Choko, Frances Irwin, Lotti Kahana-Aufleger, Margit Raab Kalina, Jane Lipski et the Holocaust Survivors’, Stolen Youth: Five Women’s Survival In The Holocaust, Memoirs Project, 30 juin 2005, 336 p. () * Isabelle Choko, Mes deux vies, Édition Caractères, 2 février 2005, 224 p. ()

References

External links

La Jeune Fille aux yeux bleus - Isabelle Choko
on the website of the Fondation de la Shoah
Témoignage d'Isabelle Choko
for the Shoah Memorial

Interview with Odile Cortinovis in 2003 1928 births 2023 deaths People from Łódź Holocaust survivors Auschwitz concentration camp survivors Bergen-Belsen concentration camp survivors Holocaust commemoration French female chess players Chess Olympiad competitors 20th-century French women {{France-bio-stub