Literatureטרודי בירגר

Trudi Birger

Trudi Birger was a German-born Israeli writer, microbiologist and Holocaust survivor who founded the Dental Volunteers for Israel clinic in Jerusalem.

1927 to 2002Founding Dental Volunteers for IsraelSurviving the Stutthof concentration campThe book A Daughter's Gift of Love

Born: 24 April 1927, Frankfurt
Died: 18 July 2002, Jerusalem
Occupation: writer, social worker

Trudi Birger was born in 1927 in Frankfurt

Trudi Birger was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1927. After the Nazis rose to power, her family moved to Memel in East Prussia in 1934.

The family was later held in the Kovno Ghetto. In 1944 she and her family were sent to the Stutthof concentration camp, where a Nazi guard knocked out her teeth. She survived the war, married and moved to Israel with her family.

In the 1960s she became a microbiologist. In 1980 she founded Dental Volunteers for Israel, a non-profit clinic in the Mekor Chaim neighborhood of Jerusalem that gives free care to needy children. She ran it for over two decades with private donations.

She received the Presidential Volunteer Award in 1981 and was named a Worthy Citizen of Jerusalem in 1991. In 1992 she published A Daughter's Gift of Love, a book about her Holocaust experience.

She was married to Zev Birger, a Dachau survivor who headed the Jerusalem International Book Fair. They had 3 sons. She died in 2002.