Fritzie Fritzshall, president of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center since 2010 and a Holocaust survivor — imprisoned at Auschwitz at age 13 but later escaped into the forest while on a death march from Auschwitz to Germany —  died June 19, according to a statement by the museum. She was 91.

She spoke extensively about her experiences in the Holocaust and advocated for social justice issues, including immigration and the refugee crisis.

In 2015, she was awarded the Bertha Honoré Palmer Making History Award for Distinction in Civic Leadership from the Chicago History Museum, and in 2020, the Global Citizenship Hero award from the Chicago Red Cross. Recently, she was awarded the 2021 Outstanding Community Leader Award from the Chicago Cultural Alliance.

“The world lost a clarion voice against bigotry and hatred, and I lost a good friend,” Cardinal Blasé Cupich of the Archdiocese of Chicago said in a statement. Fritzshall and Cupich had traveled to Auschwitz in July 2019 for a four-part TV series, “Return to Auschwitz.”