Ashdod resident Tzipora Mark remembers the horrors of the Auschwitz extermination camp with striking clarity. She says she can still physically feel the beatings and abuse she endured there. Her back bears scars, and the vision in her left eye is impaired.

“I vividly remember the beatings, the moment the number was tattooed on my arm, and the nights I went to sleep hungry, unsure whether I would wake up in the morning,” she told JNS.

Amid enduring memories of the persecution of her family and the Jewish people during the Holocaust—memories intensified by the Oct. 7 massacre and the war of the past two years—Mark will celebrate her 101st birthday on Jan. 30, three days after the global community marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day.