Isabelle Sztrauch Choko, French Champion 1956

4/16/2021 – Izabela Sztrauch née Galewska was born in 1928 in Poland, where she spent a happy childhood. During the pogroms of the second world war she was sent to the Łódź Ghetto, and then to the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. She survived, typhoid stricken and weighing just 25 kg, recovered in Sweden and finally found a home in France. There she nurtured her love for chess, and in 1956 she won the French Women's Championship. Read her inspiring story as told by Georges Bertola in Europe Échecs.