Elizabeth Nussbaum of Overland Park, Kansas, passed away on March 17 at the age of 98.
She was born on Aug. 3, 1927, raised in Szerencz, Hungary, and lived a happy life with her parents, Moshe and Rahel Weiss, and six brothers and sisters until the Nazis invaded her town.
In 1944, on the day after Passover, she, along with her family and the entire Jewish population of Szerencz (numbering about 200 families), were interned for three weeks in the local synagogue. Thereafter, the entire community was herded into cattle cars and transported, standing and without food or water, for three days to the Auschwitz concentration camp. She was immediately separated from her family, all of whom were murdered in the gas chambers, leaving her at age 16 as the sole survivor of her family. She survived the horrors of the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps as well as a death march from Dachau and was freed by Allied forces late in the winter of 1945.
After being sent to a displaced persons (DP) camp in Munich, she ended up in a DP camp in Santa Maria Al Bagno, on the tip of the heel of Italy’s boot, where she met her future husband, Sam Nussbaum (z”l).
Sam, originally from Przemsyl, Poland, had survived eight labor and concentration camps from 1939-1945 and was also the sole survivor of his family.
Sam and Elizabeth married in November 1945, and their oldest son, Larry (z”l), was born in the DP camp in November 1946. They waited three years for a visa to immigrate to the U.S. and arrived by ship in New York Harbor on March 18, 1948 — exactly 78 years to the day before Elizabeth was buried. With no surviving family members, no resources and no one to sponsor their settlement in New York, the Jewish Federation sent them to Kansas City, Missouri, for resettlement. Sam, trained as a plumber in Poland before the war, was able to gain employment and eventually formed Tip Top Plumbing and Heating while Elizabeth stayed home to raise their growing family.
They were lifelong active members of Congregation Beth Israel Abraham and Voliner and the Kansas City Jewish community as well as supporters of many organizations, among them the Jewish National Fund, Israel Bonds, Yeshivot Bnei Akiva and Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Elizabeth spent her life giving back to her community by volunteering for Mizrachi (Amit), the local mikvah and Chevra Kadisha and giving her time to numerous organizations whenever called upon. She never said “no.”
Elizabeth was preceded in death by her husband, Sam, in 2002 and her son, Larry, in 2024. She is survived by her children Mel, David (Sara Gittie) of Denver, Colorado, and Bonnie Mannis (Russell) of Scarsdale, New York. They had 20 grandchildren and more than 70 great-grandchildren. Sam often said his family was the greatest revenge to Hitler.
Online condolences for the family may be left at louismemorialchapel.com.
