Zelma Mager was born to Nekhemia Hirsh and Reizl Lea nee Rinhartz. She was child. Prior to WWII she lived in Chorzów, Poland. During the war she was in Sosnowiec, Poland. Zelma was murdered in the Shoah.
During the Shoah, Jews were murdered in a variety of ways, among them gassing, shooting, burning, drowning or burial alive, exhaustion through forced labor, starvation, epidemic diseases, deprivation of medical care and minimal hygienic conditions, and more. Some Jews took their own lives in order to escape arrest and further persecution, or to end their hopeless, relentless suffering.