Marilyn Frant (Fainbir Goldkorn) was born in Pabianice (Lodz),Poland on March 16, 1930.
At the tender age of 12 she was incarcerated along with her mother, Sarah Frant, and sister, Regina, in the Lodz ghetto. From 1942 -1944 she was trained to sew and put to work in the ghetto textile workshops.
In 1944, when the ghetto was liquidated, the family of 3 was deported to various concentration camps, including Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Poland, Bergen-Belsen, Germany, and Geislingen an der Steige, Germany. Her final transport was to Dachau (Germany) in 1945.
From November 1944 to March 1945, she was incarcerated in the work camp Geislingen an der Steige (Germany), where she performed forced labor in a munitions factory for WMF Wurttembergische Metallwarenfabrick. She used to tell her daughter Renee that “…you had to be fast or else you would lose a finger in the machine.”
Among her memories of WMF, as dictated to Renee for Marilyn’s application for German Compensation:
“…We worked 8-10 hours a day, alternating daytime and nightime…walking miles back to camp. The feet were swollen from malnutrition and cold. We wore wooden clogs, wrapped our feet in rags. (We) stood in line to get the daily portion of soup and ration of bread. I do not remember seeing daylight. Marching back and forth to and from work before daylight or after daylight. Always very, very cold and very very beaten occasionally.”
Somehow, through some miracle, this small family group of three managed to stick together throughout the war, and survived the camps until liberated by American armed forces. Then followed placement in a displaced persons camp in Landsberg Germany. Through relatives they were lucky enough to be sponsored and came to America, to start their lives over again. Marilyn learned English, found a job, married, raised a family and worked in the family business. She did her best to put the war behind her—with one exception. She successfully reconnected with old friends that had also survived the Holocaust, and kept in touch with them throughout the years.
One of the few things that remained with her after the war was her sewing skills. She was always making something, doing something keeping busy.
If she wasn’t tailoring her family’s clothes or decorating the house, she was tending to her rose and lilac bushes, or busy in the kitchen. To this day no one can beat her cheesecake—not Junior’s in Brooklyn, not S&S in the Bronx. The best cheesecake was made in Queens, by Marilyn.
Unfortunately, Marilyn succumbed to the first wave of COVID 19 and passed away on May 2, 2020.
She will always have a place in the hearts of those who knew her.