Judith Magyar Isaacson (July 3, 1925 – November 10, 2015)[1] was a Hungarian-American educator, university administrator, speaker, and author.

Born in Hungary into a Jewish family, Isaacson was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp with her mother and aunt in July 1944, where she spent eight months in forced labor in an underground munitions plant in Hessisch Lichtenau.

The recipient of numerous awards and three honorary degrees, Isaacson was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2004.

[1] On July 2, 1944, one day before her nineteenth birthday, she was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp with her mother, grandmothers, and aunts.

[5][6][7] The three women remained at Auschwitz until late August 1944,[6] when they were transported to Hessisch Lichtenau for forced labor in an underground munitions plant.

[4][7] The couple married at the Nuremberg City Hall in December 1945, and Isaacson, a lawyer in private life,[1] arranged for her, her mother and aunt to immigrate to his hometown of Lewiston, Maine the next year.

[9] In 1995 Mark Polishook composed an electronic chamber opera for one voice called Seed of Sarah, which was made into a 28-minute experimental film by director Andrea Weiss in 1998.

[1] Isaacson recorded an oral history interview with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1993,[11] and contributed a chapter on her life experiences to the 1999 book A Heart of Wisdom: Making the Jewish journey from midlife through the elder years, published by Jewish Lights Publishing.

[4] In 1987 she was a guest of the city of Hessisch Lichtenau, where she had been a forced laborer in a munitions plant during the war, on the occasion of their dedication of a monument to victims of the Holocaust.

[2] Bates Holocaust professor Steve Hochstadt described her as "an extraordinarily joyous person who could tell you about very sad things that happened to her, her relatives and her friends, but who was able to retain joy in life".