Woman who SURVIVED Auschwitz because Nazis ran out of gas turns 101

• Klara Markus, 100, survived three Holocaust concentration camps
• She escaped Auschwitz gas chambers because Nazis ran out of gas
• The Romanian mother-of-two is preparing for her 101st birthday

A Jewish woman who escaped the gas chambers of Auschwitz is preparing to celebrate her 101st birthday

Klara Markus, 100, from Sighetu Marmaţiei, in Maramureş in northern Romania, survived three Holocaust concentration camps before the Second World War was over.

Mrs Markus, who had been imprisoned in Dachau and Ravensbruck before being sent to Auschwitz, survived the Nazi German camp in occupied Poland because the Nazis ran out of gas.

Mrs Markus was born Klara Schongut, on New Years Eve 1913, in Carei, Satu Mare County.

In August 1942, she was deported to a Jewish ghetto in Budapest, Hungary where she started work in an umbrella factory.

My mother and older sisters were taken directly to Auschwitz. I never saw them again,' Klara Markus told a Romanian newspaper in 2010.

'When I asked about them, SS members replied shortly: "Maybe, you should search for them in the smoke or ashes!" and they laughed.' 

The mother-of-two remained in Budapest for another two years, before the Nazis ordered the remaining Jews in the city to march toward the concentration camps.

Incredible: Mrs Markus was forced on a one-month march to Dachau after the Nazis emptied the Budapest ghetto, after which she was also imprisoned in Ravensbruck before being sent to Auschwitz

After a month-long march, Mrs Markus arrived at Dachau on October 20, 1944, and one week later she was sent to the notorious women's' camp in Ravensbruck, before being transported to Auschwitz.

'I passed through all the camps on the German territory. The conditions were the same all over the places. 

'I was falling asleep with tears in my eyes, missing my mother, my sisters. I got accustomed with the hunger, but not with the pain in my soul. 

'Everyday we were humiliated, tortured, I was surrounded by death and lot of dirt, especially the one from our perpetrators' souls,' she said in the 2010 interview.

Shortly before the evacuation and subsequent liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945, Mrs Markus, then 30 years old and weighing around 70lbs (32kg), was sent to the gas chambers. 

She said: 'I was chosen towards the end of the day with a large group of other women and we were made ready for the gas chamber.

'But when they put us inside and went to turn the gas on, they found they had run out.

'One of the guards joked that it was our lucky day because they had already killed so many they didn't have any gas left for us.'

'God was watching over me that day.'

Mrs Markus says her narrow escape made her realise that she had  nothing to lose and she managed to escape Auschwitz.

She returned to Romania to discover that her entire family had died during the war, and proceeded to rebuild her life which is when she met her husband, Dr Andrei Markus. 

In celebration of her upcoming birthday, government representative Anton Rohian turned up at her home.

He said: 'I brought you a bunch of flowers, a bottle of champagne and an excellency diploma to thank you because you've returned to Maramures after all you've been through.

'It's important not to forget what happened in the past.'

Kissing the Romanian flag, Mrs Markus said: 'I've had terrible experiences in my life, but this is a wonderful moment.'