Renée Firestone

Prepared by the Witnesses of War team

Renée Firestone was born Renée Weinfeld on 13 April 1924 in Užhorod, Czechoslovakia, now Uzhhorod, Ukraine. She grew up with her older brother, Frank, and younger sister, Klara, in a Jewish family whose livelihood depended on her father’s textile business and tailoring shop. After Hungary annexed the region in 1938, anti-Jewish restrictions progressively dismantled their lives. Renée was forced out of school, her father lost his business, and her brother was sent to forced labor.

In 1944, Renée, her parents and Klara were confined in the Užhorod ghetto before being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her mother, Julia, was murdered upon arrival. Renée initially remained with Klara, but a later selection separated them. Her younger sister was taken for medical experimentation and subsequently murdered. Renée survived forced labor, hunger and repeated selections, including encounters with Josef Mengele.

Before the war ended, Renée endured a death march and imprisonment at Liebau, a women’s forced labor camp in Silesia. She was liberated by Soviet forces in May 1945. Returning to Czechoslovakia, she reunited with Frank, who had survived and fought with the partisans. Together they located their father in Terezín (Theresienstadt), gravely ill with tuberculosis. He died shortly afterward.

Renée married fellow Holocaust survivor Bernard Firestone in 1946 and named their daughter Klara, preserving her sister’s name. In 1948, the family immigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Los Angeles, where Renée built a successful career as a fashion designer.

She later devoted decades to Holocaust education, speaking to students and audiences around the world. Her testimony appeared in the Academy Award-winning documentary The Last Days (1998).