Judith Isaacson papers

Judith (Jutka) Magyar Isaacson was born in 1925 in Kaposvar, Hungary. She lived through four years of Nazi occupation. In August, 1944, Judith, her mother Rose, her aunt Magda, and her grandmothers were deported to Auschwitz/Birkenau. Her grandmothers were separated and gassed at Auschwitz. In late August, Judith, Rose, and Magda were taken to Lichtenau. In April 1945 they were taken by train to Tekla--a camp near Leipzig. They were liberated by the U.S. Army in April 1945.

Her father, Jeno, was sent to a labor camp in Hungary--Salank--and then taken to Buchenwald. He died at the end of the war at Muhldorf Lager.

Judith Magyar was engaged to Irving Isaacson in July 1945 and they were married shortly thereafter. She and Irving settled in Lewiston, Maine, Irving's hometown.

Isaacson later attended Bates College, graduating in 1965 with a degree in mathematics and taught math for three years at Lewiston High School. She served as chair of the high school math department.

She received a Master's Degree from Bowdoin College in 1967, and joined Bates as a lecturer in mathematics and computer science the following year. She was hired as Dean of Women at Bates College in 1969. In 1975 she was appointed Dean of Students.

In 1976, Isaacson was invited to speak at Bowdoin College after a showing of Night and Fog, a film on the Holocaust. This proved to be a cathartic experience for her, as the next day she began writing what would become Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor, published in 1990 by the University of Illinois Press. She retired from Bates in 1977.

Isaacson received an honorary degree from Bates College in 1994, and the Hargraves Freedom Prize from Bowdoin College in 1996. Seed of Sarah has been translated into several languages including Hungarian and German. Isaacson died in 2015 in Auburn, aged 90.