Prominent Holocaust survivors die, including the ‘librarian of Auschwitz’ and the last Warsaw Ghetto fighter

When Michael Smuss died last month at 99, an era of Jewish history came to a close.

Smuss was the last known resistance fighter during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when Jews rose up against their Nazi persecutors in one of the most dramatic episodes of the Holocaust.

Smuss was not the only prominent survivor to die in recent weeks. A number of survivors, several centenarians, have died in a wave that underscores the rapid disappearance of anyone alive with robust memories of the Holocaust.

Six months after the Claims Conference estimated that 220,800 Holocaust survivors remained alive, that number has dropped below 200,000, according to Greg Schneider, the group’s executive vice president. What’s more, those who were “in camps and ghettos and who can speak to that experience,” he noted,