Supercentenarian Profile

Gisela Dollinger

Born:

1902-08-30

Baden bei Wien, Lower Austria

Austria

Died:

2014-03-10

New York City, New York

United States

Gisela “Gisa” Dollinger (née Kohn) was an Austrian-born American supercentenarian.

BIOGRAPHY

Gisela Dollinger was born in Baden bei Wien, Lower Austria, Austria, on 30 August 1902. Her parents were Jakob Kohn (1839–1927) and Anna (Netti) Esther Reisch (1859–1929). She married Bernard Dollinger (1900–1993).

Shortly after Kristallnacht, during which her family’s dry-goods store was destroyed and her husband, Bernard, was deported to Dachau, Dollinger went to the Gestapo headquarters in Vienna and successfully petitioned for his release. She argued that Bernard, a Polish citizen rather than an Austrian national, should not have been included in the mass arrests. Some family members later speculated that she may have supplemented her appeal with a bribe, although Dollinger herself never mentioned this when recounting the episode.

Upon his release, Bernard was warned that if he did not leave Austria within two weeks, he would be sent back to the concentration camp. Thanks to a last-minute cancellation, the couple secured two first-class tickets on a ship bound for Japanese-occupied China. In Shanghai, the Dollingers lived in the overcrowded and impoverished ghetto to which stateless refugees were confined. There, Gisela worked for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, helping distribute clothing and other forms of humanitarian aid.

In December 1948, exactly ten years after fleeing Austria, the Dollingers left China for the newly established State of Israel. Two years later, encouraged by Bernard’s sisters, who had settled in the United States, the couple immigrated to New York and began a new chapter of their lives.

The couple settled in a rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s East Village, where Dollinger would remain for more than six decades. Bernard found work as a house painter, while Gisela took a job at an envelope factory. For a variety of reasons, the Dollingers had postponed starting a family during the years of persecution, displacement, and migration. By the time they finally reached the United States and achieved a measure of stability, Gisela was already in her late forties. As a result, the couple never had children of their own.

In 2005, at the age of 103, Dollinger returned to Austria for the first time since she and her husband, Bernard, fled the country in December 1938. Invited to speak at the rededication of the synagogue that her father had helped establish in the 1880s, she used the occasion as an opportunity for a family reunion.

Gisela Dollinger passed away on 10 March 2014, at the age of 111 years, 192 days.