Lucy Jacobs

Lucy Gluck (Glick) Jacobs, a survivor of the Holocaust, died at the age of 96 on June 19, 2015. She's survived by her son Martin Stone, grandson Erik Lewin and granddaughter Chelsea Stone. She was preceded in death by her daughter Flora Lewin, her husband Arthur and her brothers, sisters and parents.

Jacobs was born in Munkacs, Czechoslovakia (present day Ukraine) on July 15, 1928 to Mordechai Gluck and Frida Mermelstein Gluck. The second youngest of seven children, she was 14 years old when she, along with her parents and her siblings, were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in May 1944. In January 1945, as Soviet troops closed in on the Nazis, Jacobs was sent on a death march, stopping at different concentration camps in Germany before eventually arriving at Bergen-Belsen, where she remained for the rest of the war. While imprisoned by the Nazis, she worked in the camp kitchens, cooking food for the prisoners and stealing extra to feed herself and others who were starving, among other hard labor jobs. By spring 1945, typhus was widespread within the camp. Jacobs contracted the disease and was near death when the camp was liberated by the British army in April 1945. She eventually recovered and helped nurse others to health before returning home to Czechoslovakia. Of her immediate family, only Jacobs, two of her brothers and one sister survived World War II.

Jacobs met and married her first husband Bernard Mermelstein, a Czech officer in the Soviet army and friend of her uncle, in the fall of 1945, and the couple settled in Teplice-Sanov, Czechoslovakia. Jacobs, then 17, gave birth to her son Martin in September 1946. The young family relocated to the recently established state of Israel three years later, in order to escape the communist forces that were taking hold in Czechoslovakia. There, Jacobs welcomed her daughter Flora in 1950. In addition to raising her family, during this time, Jacobs worked as a dressmaker, in a refinery and as a telephone operator.

In 1959, Jacobs moved with her husband and children to the Bronx in New York City. The couple divorced in 1961, and Jacobs met and married her second husband Arthur, a widower, in 1962. She and her children lived with him and his four children from his previous marriage in Westchester County, New York.

Jacobs resided in New York for most of her adult life, but moved to Boca Raton, Florida in the early 1990s following her husband's death. There she cultivated a strong community of friends and fellow Holocaust survivors, and lived a short drive away from her daughter Flora.

Flora passed away in 2013 after a battle with cancer. Lucy moved to Las Vegas in 2014, where she remained active in the Jewish community for the remainder of her life. Her son Martin and daughter-in-law Norma cared for her until her death on June 19, 2025.

Starting in the late 1970s and up until a year before her death, Jacobs frequently spoke before groups at schools, synagogues, etc about her experience in the Holocaust. She was fluent in six languages and was always happy to converse with friends, neighbors and strangers. In 1994, she was interviewed by the USC Shoah Foundation, an organization dedicated to preserving Holocaust survivors' life stories founded by Steven Spielberg. She was also honored in 2015 by Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval at the governor's mansion in Carson City, a trip funded by prominent Jewish philanthropists Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson.

Jacobs is remembered by those who knew her as a tough, feisty woman and one of the world's greatest cooks. She remains an inspiration to many and often shared her wish that the world never forget what happened to 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.

Jacobs was laid to rest in Westchester County at Sharon Garden Cemetery on June 25. Donations in memory of her life can be made to the USC Shoah Foundation Holocaust Survivor Testimony Fund.