Gita Mann was born Gizella Schöner on 25 October 1929 in Csenger, Hungary. She had six siblings, four of whom were older than her. Her family was not wealthy and at times they lived with nine people in just one room. In her memoirs, Gita Mann describes her family as very religious; their faith gave the family security despite the great economic hardship.

Occupation and persecution
In March 1944, German units occupied Hungary, which had previously been allied with the German Reich. With the occupation, Hungarian Jews also became the target of German persecution. A large-scale ghettoisation began very quickly before the first transports from Hungary left for Auschwitz in May 1944. In the same month, the occupying forces deported Gita Mann and her family to the Matészalka ghetto and in June she reached Auschwitz, crammed into a railway carriage. During the selection, she saw her mother, her younger brothers and her older sister's baby for the last time. Following a survival instinct, she herself had falsely declared her age to the SS as 16.

Via Horneburg to East Westphalia
About a month after she arrived in Auschwitz, Gita Mann was selected for a transport to the west. The train from Auschwitz ended in Horneburg near Hamburg, where the Philips subsidiary Valvo had relocated a radio tube production facility. Gita Mann had to produce electronic parts there until Horneburg was cleared in February 1945. Afterwards, most of the camp's 250 or so prisoners were taken to the Hausberge satellite camp to continue forced labour for Philips in the underground tunnels in Jakobsberg. During the first few weeks, the sleeping quarters for the women and girls were also located underground.

From Hamburg to Sweden
When the camps at Porta Westfalica were cleared, Gita Mann was on a transport that was initially to take her to the Beendorf satellite camp. Here, she was again scheduled for forced labour in an underground camp. After the Beendorf camp was cleared a few days after the arrival of the prisoners from Hausberge, the transport with the women reached Hamburg shortly before the end of the war. In a subcamp in Hamburg, Gita Mann was placed on a Bernadotte-Aktion transport by the “White Buses” operation that was to free her and take her to Sweden.

Israel and the USA
In Sweden, Gita Mann and 42 other women and girls were taken in and cared for near Stockholm. After leaving Sweden, she initially returned to Csenger, where she lived for a while with her sister, who had also survived the Shoah. As she no longer felt at home there, she planned to emigrate to Israel. While preparing to emigrate, she met her future husband, with whom she eventually started her own family in Israel. She had two children and spent the rest of her life in the USA and Israel.

Back in Porta Westfalica 
in 2016, Gita Mann met her future biographer Sonja Michel at a memorial event in southern Germany. The two of them visited the places of Gita's youth and her time in prison together, including Porta Westfalica in 2017. In several impressive events, they reported on Gita Mann's life and thus enriched the local remembrance work in the long term. The book "Gita" by Sonja Michel, which was based on these journeys, was published in 2020. Gita Mann now lives near her children in New Jersey in the USA.

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