{"id":182780,"date":"2025-08-28T17:29:20","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T17:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/182780\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T17:29:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T17:29:20","slug":"last-living-holocaust-camp-survivor-in-san-antonio-passes-away-leaves-extraordinary-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/182780\/","title":{"rendered":"Last living Holocaust camp survivor in San Antonio passes away, leaves extraordinary legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN ANTONIO <\/strong> \u2013 San Antonio\u2019s Jewish community is mourning the loss of the last remaining living Holocaust concentration camp survivor in the city.<\/p>\n

Susanne Jalnos passed away Saturday at the age of 98, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy.<\/p>\n

Her expansive family and the San Antonio community at large are promising to continue that legacy. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe just had been through so much. In her words, she beat the Holocaust,\u201d said Susanne\u2019s son Robi Jalnos. <\/p>\n

Robi held precious and prized pictures of his mom, describing her as a hero. <\/p>\n

He pointed out a grainy black and white picture of three siblings, saying, \u201cThis was a picture taken back in her hometown of Rojka, Hungary. This is her older brother, Mike. This is my mother here. She was the middle child. And this was her younger sister, Anna. Mike was able to escape, but her and her sister were carted away in a boxcar to Auschwitz.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1944, Susanne and her sister were forced into the Auschwitz concentration camp. <\/p>\n

Susanne\u2019s parents were murdered, but she and her sister survived the camp.<\/p>\n

After surviving so much, Susanne\u2019s beloved husband died at 39 years old, leaving her a single mom with four young boys. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe starvation and what he went through during the Holocaust was one of the reasons he died so young. I tell his story at the Holocaust Museum, and it is an amazing story of heroism. He was from Poland, so fighting, working in the underground, sabotaging German tanks and vehicles, being shot, going into camps (and) escaping. He went through a lot himself,\u201d Robi said. <\/p>\n

Her sons said she wasn\u2019t only the matriarch of their Jewish families, but also the matriarch of San Antonio\u2019s Jewish community. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe was involved in just about every organization, and she was kind of the glue that held them together,\u201d Robi said. <\/p>\n

One of those organizations was the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was important to her that people did not forget, and she spoke to literally thousands and thousands of people here in San Antonio and surrounding areas. She spoke to the Shoah Group, which was directed by Steven Spielberg, so they recorded her story,\u201d Robi said. <\/p>\n

He and his brothers watched Susanne\u2019s strength daily as she suffered through PTSD from her experiences. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a daily routine just to see her break down and cry at any time,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Yet, that never stopped her from telling the story she knew had to be shared. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have thousands of letters from school children that she spoke to that wrote her how much they loved her. I went to those presentations, and it was amazing how it touched these kids. To see fifth graders crying over the ordeal, realizing what she went through and how fortunate they were that they don\u2019t have to go through something like that,\u201d Robi said. <\/p>\n

Thousands more messages of love have poured in since Susanne\u2019s death, and it\u2019s something that helps quell the grief for her tight-knit family, which now spans generations. <\/p>\n

\u201cHer grandkids and great-grandkids brought her so much joy. You could just see the smile on her face,\u201d Robi and his brothers said, flipping through stacks of family pictures. <\/p>\n

In the face of record rates of antisemitism, they have all vowed to continue their matriarch\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI continued that and became a speaker for the Holocaust Museum, and I still do that to this day. It\u2019s very important now, because there are so many doubters out there. There (are) people that say this thing never happened,\u201d Robi said. <\/p>\n

The entire Jalnos family hopes the rest of the community will help them honor Susanne\u2019s strength, grit and love by also vowing never to forget.<\/p>\n

Susanne\u2019s testimony can be found on the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio\u2019s website. <\/a><\/p>\n

Anyone can also go to that website to learn more about Holocaust or request a presentation at their school, workplace, or faith-based organization. <\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 San Antonio\u2019s Jewish community is mourning the loss of the last remaining living Holocaust concentration…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":182781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,472,14446,102841,7202,7203,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-182780","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-history","10":"tag-holocaust","11":"tag-holocaust-memorial-museum","12":"tag-san-antonio","13":"tag-sanantonio","14":"tag-texas","15":"tag-tx","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115107578751221281","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}