Dina Babbitt was many things: Art Babbitt’s third wife (married April 17, 1948), the mother of his children, an artist, a Holocaust survivor, a hero, an activist.

A Jewish art student in WWII Czechoslovakia, she survived Auschwitz – and bargained for her mother’s life – by painting portraits of Romani (aka Gypsy) prisoners for the infamous nazi Dr. Mengele.  Decades later, her paintings were discovered in Poland and she fought until her death in 2009 to regain possession of them.

Fellow artists at Marvel Comics illustrated her story in X-Men: Magneto Testament #5 (2008).  It’s reprinted below completely without permission.  But of all the articles and interviews that were written about her in the years before she died, I think this comic does the best and most appropriate job of communicating her story.  Note the way in which Disney’s Snow White saved her life.