Renée Firestone
Renée Firestone (née Weinfeld; born April 13, 1924) is a Holocaust survivor and educator, who became known for her fashion designs in the 1960s after she immigrated to the United States. Early life. Born Renée Weinfeld in Uzhhorod, Czechoslovakia on April 13, 1924, she lived in an area annexed into Hungary in 1938. She was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 along with her family when she was 19. She lost her mother and a sister there, then survived a death march before she was liberated in 1945. Her father also survived, but died of tuberculosis soon  after. She married a man in Prague that had survived a forced labor camp in Hungary and then Mauthausen concentration camp. They immigrated to the United States in 1948 and settled in Los Angeles, California. Career. Firestone became a successful fashion designer and Holocaust educator. She first collaborated with fashion designer Rudi Gernreich in the 1950s, before starting her own clothing line in 1960. In 2012 she was featured in the Museum of California Design's "California’s Designing Women: 1896—1986" exhibit. Some of her fashion designs are in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's (LACMA) permanent collection . Starting in 1977, Firestone devoted herself to educating others about the Holocaust, and she has spoken widely. In 2011 she testified for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Holocaust-Era Claims in the 21st Century. In 2018 she said, "Get to know each other. People don’t know each other. You have to understand we are all the same...If you don’t know someone, it’s just a stranger to you and it’s very easy to get rid of a stranger." In media. Firestone was one of five Hungarian Holocaust survivors whose story was featured in the 1998  Academy Award-winning documentary movie, "The Last Days". It was produced by June Beallor, Kenneth Lipper, Steven Spielberg, and the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. The film was remastered and scheduled for wider release in 2021 by Netflix. Firestone is one of the main subjects of the 2016 documentary film The Last Laugh, directed by Ferne Pearlstein. Awards. Museum of California Design (MOCAD), Los Angeles, 2012