Holocaust Survivor Who Died in Crash Is Mourned

A 77-year-old Holocaust survivor, who witnessed unspeakable horrors in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, was remembered Saturday as a woman of strength and faith.

Charlotte Lenga’s extraordinary life came to a tragic end Friday afternoon when a stolen Chevrolet Suburban being chased by police broadsided her compact car on White Oak Avenue near Miranda Street in Encino.

The driver of the large sport utility vehicle, James McMann, 22, of Chatsworth, who gave the false name Frank McIntyre when arrested, was being held Saturday without bail on suspicion of murder, said Officer Jason Lee, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman.

Lenga and six other Holocaust survivors filed a lawsuit last year against Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and several German companies, accusing the firms of using slave labor during the Holocaust.

“To have survived what she survived and to have her life end this way is a real pity,” said Arthur Stern, chairman of the Holocaust Restitution Committee of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles.

“It requires guts to start a lawsuit,” he added. “And it’s the right thing to do.”

The fatal accident marked the tragic conclusion of a high-speed police pursuit through the heart of the San Fernando Valley that began in Northridge at 12:20 p.m. Friday and ended an hour later in Encino.

The chase began about noon in the 17700 block of Lanark Street in Northridge when a police officer saw a man loading items into a white van, police said.

With helicopters and patrol cars tracking him, police said the driver refused to pull over and drove to Panorama City, where he lost control of the van and slammed into a ground-floor apartment on Nordhoff Street.

Police said McMann pulled himself from the debris, entered an adjacent apartment and demanded that the resident hand over car keys.

McMann then drove a Suburban to Encino, where Lenga was struck and killed on White Oak Avenue as she made a left turn into the path of the speeding vehicle, police said.

Lenga’s family members were too grief-stricken to discuss the tragedy, according to a woman who answered a phone call.

Lenga was born Sept. 28, 1923, in Jasina-Korosmezo, in the former Czechoslovakia, and survived concentration camps at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.

According to court papers, the Nazis took Lenga from her home and transported her from a Jewish ghetto in Mateszalko to Auschwitz, where she arrived on May 21, 1944.

For the remainder of World War II, Lenga was forced to work for German industry under inhumane conditions. She was also forced to sort through prisoners’ personal possessions for precious metal items to be remelted.

The guards beat Lenga, then forced her to work a 12-hour shift, still bloody and swollen from being beaten. She was enslaved until March 1945, when she was sent on a “death march” to Bergen-Belsen, where she was liberated in May 1945.

Enna Goffman, a lawyer and a community activist with the Chabad Russian Project, a West Hollywood organization that assists Holocaust survivors with petitions for restitution, called Lenga an unsung hero.

“They have to reopen wounds that they don’t care to reopen,” Goffman said. “I have not had one client who hasn’t fallen to pieces when they have to relive these experiences. I consider her a hero.”

Elderly neighbors in the Zelzah Avenue condominium complex that Charlotte and David Lenga called home for 10 years remembered her as a woman who was devoted to her family and her Jewish faith.

“She was very family-oriented and very concerned about everyone who lives in the building,” said Sema Smith, 72, who has lived in the 12-unit complex since it was built in 1977. “She was preparing for Hanukkah and may have been going to the post office to mail some cards.”

Smith said she was standing in line at the post office at White Oak Avenue and Hatteras Street when the lights flickered and everything went dark.

“We heard the helicopters and the sirens,” she said. “When I left the parking lot, there were dozens of police cars. I could see smoke coming out of the Suburban. I saw a blond woman at the wheel of the other car, but I didn’t even recognize the car.”

It wasn’t until later, when Smith saw a television news report, that she realized it was Lenga that she had seen at the wheel, Smith said. “It’s just very sad.”

Another neighbor, who asked not to be identified, described Lenga as an active woman who took pride in her appearance.

“I understand that she had survived the Holocaust and for her to come to such a tragic end is a double tragedy,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking.”

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Times staff writer Sue Fox contributed to this report.