Vancouver Holocaust Education Center Testimony Project

Vancouver Holocaust Education Center Testimony Project Veronica Winkler

,Weisz was born on February 13, 1924 in Lovasberény אסתר Veronica “Vera” Esther Hungary, the second of three children of Alexander and Miriam “Margit” Weisz.

Lovasberény is located about 60–70 km south of Budapest, with about 2,500 inhabitants during Veronica’s youth. Its Jewish population peaked to about 1200 in the mid 19th century but fell dramatically afterwards when residency restrictions were eased in the 1870s and most of the town’s Jews moved to Budapest. By the time Veronica was born, she believes the Jewish population in Lovasberény had dwindled down to less than 30 families. There was a synagogue and a rabbi, but there were no other young Jewish children in the town except for one other Jewish family, with two small boys. The remaining families were comprised of older Jews.

Veronica’s father, Alexander Weisz was born in Nadap, Hungary, on January 2, 1896 to Joseph and Janka (née Steiner) Weisz. Janka died from complications from childbirth when Alexander was just eight days old and he was adopted and raised by his paternal uncle, Henrik and wife Regina (née Krohn). After finishing high school, Alexander began studying economics at Budapest University; however his studies were interrupted in 1914 by the outbreak of World War I. Alexander served in the Hungarian army for five years, after which he returned home to Lovasberény.

Henrik had been a successful grocer and grain merchant in Lovasberény. He passed away in 1916 and after the war Alexander took over the family businesses. He ran them with the help of Janka and Miriam-Margit. Alexander had a strong entrepreneurial spirit and eventually added a winery to the family’s business holdings. Joseph Weisz later remarried and moved to Lovasberény with his second wife, Rosalia, when Veronica was very young.

Miriam-Margit Weisz (née Hajnal) was born in Bicske, Hungary on August 22, 1902. She was orphaned in 1904 at the age of two when both her parents, Blau Fani and Hajnal Miksa succumbed to the Spanish Flu. She was taken in by an aunt, Rosa Blau1 in Bicske and finished high school before marrying Alexander. Blau Fani and Hajnal Miksa had two children, Hajnal Arpad born in 1896, died in 1945 and Miriam-Margit born in 1902, died in 1958.

The Weiszes were comfortably off and lived in a nice house, with a maid and a “Fraulein from Wien,” an Austrian nanny for the children, whose job was to teach the children German. The Weiszes spoke Hungarian and German at home. Veronica was very close to her maternal grandmother, Regina, but she also had a nice relationship with Rosalia.

1 Note: Rosa Blau was married to Schlesinger Moritz. They had 2 children, Bozsi and Misi. Misi’s wife was Bakora Gizi (a Christian).

1 Veronica remembers her father as well-loved by the community, a bit chubby, with a fantastic sense of humour. He was “Rosh Hakahal,” head of the Jewish community of Lovasberény. She remembers her mother Miriam-Margit as a very beautiful woman, but melancholy. Veronica believes the loss of her parents at an early age was a wound that never completely healed for Miriam-Margit.

Despite the tiny Jewish population in Lovasberény, and with no Jewish school to educate the children, the Weisz family home was distinctly Jewish. The family lit Shabbat candles, attended synagogue, celebrated Jewish holidays, and kept kosher (a little less strictly, after the passing of Regina in 1936).

Veronica’s youth was happy. She was close to her parents and older sister Marta born December 7, 1922, in Lovasberény. But she was particularly attached ,מרים Miriam .born March 15, 1930, in Budapest יצחק to her little brother, Ferenc “Feri” Itzhak Veronica loved school, particularly history and geography. Her friends and classmates were Catholic and Reformed (Calvinist), and she did not experience anti-Semitism when she was young. She went to the local elementary school in Lovasberény. Later, she commuted to middle school in Bickse, rising at 5:00am for the one-hour trip by train, and making the return trip home after a full day of school.

In 1936, when Marta was 14, Miriam-Margit and Alexander decided it was time for her to learn a trade and sent her to Budapest to study home economics. There was really no other option for educating her in Lovasberény.

Eighteen months later, when Veronica turned 14, her parents sent her to join her sister. It was a difficult parting for Veronica, and her first year away from home was hard. Having her sister with her in Budapest made things a little easier. The girls boarded at the Belvárosi Zsidó Nők Intézete (Downtown Jewish Woman’s Institute) with about 20 other girls, ages 14-17, and attended trade schools in Budapest. The Institute had very strict rules, 8pm curfew and such, but there were still opportunities to visit with their maternal uncle, Arpad Hajnal, and paternal aunt, Kata Weisz.

Veronica had a talent for drawing and painting, so Alexander suggested she pursue photography. His second cousin was renowned Hungarian photographer Angelo (Pál Funk). Veronica studied for three years with the celebrated shutterbug and received a diploma from his school. (She later completed gymnasium (high school), and worked for Angelo.)

Things began to change gradually after the Anschluss in 1938. Every few months new anti-Jewish restrictions were imposed on the Jews of Budapest. Alexander and Miriam- Margit began to make plans to liquidate their businesses and join the girls in Budapest. Feri, age 8, was sent to a Jewish boys’ boarding school in Győr, in northwest Hungary.

2 One of the hurdles faced by the Weiszes was that they had to show proof Alexander had a job in Budapest. A cousin of Alexander’s came to the rescue. He had bought one of the first apartment buildings in Budapest, and made Alexander the “building manager.” (Alexander was actually a partner with Arpad in a wholesale drug business.) The cousin also gave the family a lovely three-bedroom apartment to live in. The family was reunited in 1941, and Marta, Veronica and Feri moved into their new flat with their parents.

The comfy accommodations lasted for a year. In 1942, things began to heat up for the Weiszes. A new law came into effect that prohibited Jews from managing buildings, thereby robbing Alexander of his “employment.” In the spring of that year the family was compelled to downsize in a forced exchange of homes with a Christian family2. The latter got the Weisz’s lovely apartment; the Weiszes got the Christian family’s small one bedroom flat. It was very depressing: Alexander and Miriam-Margit slept in the bedroom. The girls slept in the kitchen. And little Feri slept in the bathtub.

The building into which they had to move eventually became a “yellow star house,” so called for their identification as Jewish residences. Their house was located in what would eventually be Budapest’s Jewish ghetto, which meant they did not have to move again as the ghetto was established and neighborhood filled with yellow star houses. The family was forced to give up many of their possessions, including their radio and jewelry. Life became more and more challenging as restrictive curfews were imposed and food became scarce. There was little to do but read.

Then came the bombs. England and America started bombing Budapest but as Jews, the Weiszes were not allowed in the building’s bomb shelters. Fortunately, the Weisz’s building escaped damage, but the building next door to them was bombed. Men were scarce, having already been victims of round-ups, so Veronica and her sister were conscripted to clean up the debris and spent long days working to clear the mess.

This “new normal” life continued for the Weiszes until 1944. From March to October 1944, they hoped for the best as they heard about what was happening in Europe. They were cognizant of what was going on in Austria and knew Hungary’s Jews were being deported but they were oblivious about the horrors of Auschwitz and everything else that was transpiring in Poland. There was never any talk of leaving; only faint hopes that things would soon get better.

In the fall of 1944, there was a large roundup of Jewish men in Budapest. Alexander was one of these men. The day he left was the last day Veronica ever saw her father. She

2 According to jewishvirtuallibrary.org, Jews were ordered to vacate hundreds of apartments for Christian bombing victims, beginning in April 1942. Jews were later concentrated in buildings that were identified by a yellow star.

3 did not learn of his fate until nearly a decade after the end of the war: He had been sent to Buchenwald and died there a week before the camp was liberated.

A roundup of Jewish women followed that of the men. Veronica and Marta were sent to Pecel, where they were held in a labour camp with other young women. They were put to work nearby digging trenches to impede the advancing Russian tanks, as well as clearing trees to make paths for German tanks. The women slept 30-40 to a barn and subsisted on one meal a day of watery soup and a piece of bread. Veronica remembers screams and crying but does not recall seeing anyone die.

At the beginning of November 1944, they were moved to another camp, near an abandoned brick factory, outside Buda. They stayed there for three or four days, without food or water. From the factory, they began a seven-day “Todesmarsch” (death march) with hundreds of men and women toward the Austro-Hungarian border. Veronica remembers an older couple taking some pills and committing suicide on the journey. The girls walked 40-50km per day for eight days, with no food or water, forced to sleep outside in the cold and rain. They had been forced earlier to give up their rucksacks, so they had no extra food or clothing. Veronica remembers once being forced to sleep in a field next to an empty school yearning for its shelter.

The day before they arrived at the border, they were housed in a barn with animals. Veronica and Marta along with many others, headed for the loft. Marta fell immediately asleep, but Veronica decided to take advantage of the opportunity to finally get some water. As she went down to get some the loft collapsed, killing many people below and above her. Several men landed on top of her and Veronica sustained a severe injury to her knee and the left side of her face, where a large portion of skin was torn off. Marta, thankfully, was not hurt. She had slept through the entire incident and didn’t realize what had happened until the next morning.

Veronica was removed to an infirmary but the following day the prisoners had to continue. Veronica was unable to walk, so a small carriage was secured to transport her. The German’s timeline and quota had to be met. Marta found Veronica but was told she would have to walk. Veronica insisted she not be separated from her sister, and Marta was allowed to join Veronica in the carriage.

Veronica and Marta were nearly the last in the line of prisoners and the raised bed of the carriage allowed Veronica to see what was happening at the Austro-Hungarian border. She could see a German soldier counting heads. She also saw two girls from one of the labour camps where she had worked standing off to the side with a Hungarian officer. Veronica asked them why they were separated from the group, and the girls explained it was because they each had a Schutz-Pass.3 Although Veronica did

3 Schutz-Pass was a kind of “passport” issued by foreign diplomats that offered protection to the bearer from being deported. The Schutz-Pass identified the bearers as

4 not know what it was, she instinctively knew the pass could save them so she called out that she and Marta had them, too. The officer asked where their passes were, and Veronica said they didn’t have them on them because they had given them to a “Nyilas” (Hungarian Arrow Cross) officer. The Hungarian officer responded that he would take them back to Hegyeshalom, the nearest Hungarian town, about 2-3km away, and if Veronica didn’t produce the passes, he would kill her and Marta.

He repeated the threat along the walk back to Hegyeshalom. Yet, Veronica remembers this man as being less cruel than other officers, even helping her to walk the distance on her injured leg. He took the four girls to a small house, repeating that he was going to check about their Schutz-Pass. Shortly thereafter, a young officer arrived, asking for Vera Weisz. Veronica was very scared, but she identified herself and this officer presented her with precious gifts: milk and bread. Their officer escort from the border had arranged it. It was the first food she and her sister had had in more than a week. The bounty was shared between the four girls.

The next day they were moved to another barn, where Veronica and Marta saw two cousins. The cousins had Schutz-Pass. A man arrived and asked if anyone did not have a Schutz-Pass, but Veronica was too scared to answer this time. Another man, presenting himself as a Catholic priest, came later to query again whether everyone had a Schutz- Pass. Veronica confessed that she and Marta did not have them and asked him for help. The priest said he would get them for them but the next day a different man came to say he was taking them to Budapest. They arrived in the city and were put into a “safe house,”4 which was teeming with thousands of stinking people. They “lived like animals,” remembers Veronica, without sanitation, sleeping everywhere and anywhere.

The next morning a woman came to them and asked, “What can we do with you? You have no papers.” She told them to go to the Spanish consulate. There, they met Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian who posed as the Spanish consul-general to Hungary in the winter of 1944 and who is credited with saving the lives of more than 5,000 thousand Hungarian Jews. Veronica remembers Perlasca as very kind. He issued each girl a Shutz-Pass and sent them to the Spanish House, a safe house, where they took off their yellow star. They were assigned to a two-bedroom flat on the third floor, with 200 others. They shared one bedroom with a couple and a little boy, who slept on the bed, another couple on the floor on one side of the bed, and Veronica and Marta on the floor on the other side of the bed. They had no food; only water. Their first night in the flat, Perlasca sent them some food, as well as a woman to treat Veronica’s face. a sovereign subject awaiting repatriation to their host countries and thus prevented their deportation. Thousands of Hungarian Jews were saved by these documents. One of the most famous issuers of Schutz-Pass was Swedish Raoul Wallenberg. 4 Safe houses were considered governed by extraterritorial conventions and those taking refuge there were effectively safe from deportation.

5 Veronica was ill with fever. Marta went home hoping to see their mother, but found only their brother. To this day, Veronica does not know how Feri survived on his own. Feri told Marta that their mother had secured Swedish Schutz-Pass for her daughters; however she had been rounded up a few weeks after her daughters and forced on her own Todesmarsch. Miriam-Margit had hoped to catch the girls at the Austro-Hungarian border and save them with the Swedish Shutz-Pass. When she did not find Marta and Veronica there, Miriam-Margit used one of the Schutz-Pass for herself, and gave one to another woman, saving her life. Miriam-Margit was so youthful she passed for her daughter. She returned to Budapest and went to the Swedish safe house.

In the meantime, Feri decided that it was time for him to take action of his own. He had a Hitler Youth uniform from his days in gymnasium and somehow procured a Nylias armband. With his blond hair and blue eyes, 14-year-old Feri easily passed for Aryan. He brazenly walked up to Arrow Cross headquarters and offered to volunteer.5 This remarkable youth was taken in and worked for the enemy in a variety of jobs, including carrying messages. His unique position inside also put him in a position to gather intelligence.

In December 1944, Feri learned that the Arrow Cross was planning on liquidating the home where his mother was taking refuge. He warned his mother, who in turn shared the warning with her housemates. Unfortunately, the word of a 14-year-old boy had little credibility with the masses. Only one woman believed Miriam-Margit. Both women escaped and the remaining Jews were shot and thrown into the Danube.

Miriam-Margit fled to the train station and caught a train to Bicske, where she’d grown up and where Bakora Gizi resided. On the train, a gypsy woman identified her as Jewish. Miriam-Margit pleaded with her not to give her away. Instead, a group of gypsies in the car surrounded Miriam-Margit and pretended she was part of their group.

Miriam-Margit arrived at the home of a second cousin there, Moritz Schlesinger6. The cousin had been rounded up but his wife, Gizi Bakora, a Christian, took Miriam-Margit in without hesitation. When she found out Veronica and Marta were still in Budapest, she got false papers for them, identifying them as Christian. She went to the Spanish safe house with the papers and brought the girls back to Bicske. They hid in the basement, along with 20 other of Gizi’s family members, who sought shelter in the reinforced subfloor, the closest thing to a bunker. Feri initially stayed behind because he felt he could help save more Jews. After the Russians arrived in Budapest, Feri fled to Bicske and was reunited there with his mother and sisters.

5 Reminiscent of Pinchas Rosenbaum, another Hungarian whose own Aryan good looks allowed him to successfully infiltrate the Hungarian Arrow Cross and pass as a Nazi. His story is profiled in the Simon Wiesenthal Center movie, “Unlikely Heroes.” 6 Veronica does not recall her cousin’s first name.

6 The battle between the Germans and Russians came ever closer to Bicske. A Russian officer told the family the Russians could not hold the town and were losing ground to the Germans, and advised the quartet to leave Bicske. So the family decided to flee to Lovasberény. They were taken in and hidden by Christian family friends there. The quartet soon found itself caught in the middle of the conflict as the frontiers of the war between Russia and Germany shifted ever closer. The family tried to outrun the war and walked in the opposite direction of the fighting. Alexander’s winery was in this area, between Biscke and Lovasberény. One day, they approached the one-room house at the winery hoping to find shelter. Instead, three Russian soldiers found them. They raped Miriam-Margit, Marta and Veronica as young Feri was forced to watch.

After this trauma, they returned briefly to Kápolnásnyék, a town about 30km south of Bicske, and toward the end of January 1945 the group walked 100km back to Budapest. They sometimes slept in barns of locals, but had no food or anything to drink. It took them 10 days to arrive in Buda. Miriam-Margit gave her wedding band to a ‘komp’ (ferry) pilot to pay for their passage to Pest. They went back to their old apartment-- and waited. It was not a warm welcome from many of their Christian neighbours, who asked Miriam-Margit why she had returned. Although the Russians were by then close to securing the city, the neighbours told Miriam-Margit the Germans would be back and there was no place for her or her children in Budapest.

Life was very difficult during this period, with food being the biggest challenge for the family. Miriam-Margit supported the family with a combination of wits and some gold she found at one of the homes where they had hidden. On a good day, they were able to buy a little wood for heating or steal some beans. On a better day, horses in the street killed from bombs provided meat for soup. Feri found a shaving knife and used it to cut open and butcher horses that had not already been opened by others.

Later that winter, a Russian officer came to the flat and told the family the Russians, who now controlled the city, were appropriating the family’s apartment. Veronica does not remember exactly how, perhaps from his housekeeper, but Miriam-Margit managed to get the key to Arpad’s apartment and the family moved there. Arpad and his family had already gone, never to be heard from again. The flat was in the same building as the family’s pre-war wholesale drug business. It was near a synagogue where daily lists were posted with the names of those who had returned, were in hospital, etc. Each day Miriam-Margit would check the list looking for Alexander’s name. One day, she saw the name Edith Gottlieb on the list; it was her cousin’s Bozsi daughter. Miriam-Margit took Edith home. The family soon added another member, Veronica’s friend, Shoshanna.

The family had secured a portion of their inventory from the business in a large safe. Veronica remembers going to unlock the safe. Miriam-Margit managed to get the family’s wholesale drug business up and running and Veronica helped her mother manage it.

7 Four lovely young women in one apartment was quite the neighbourhood draw. After the war ended, Budapest’s survivors began to trickle back and many of the young men who had left returned as orphans who were buoyed by a little home hospitality, especially in the company of pretty girls.

In the summer of 1945, a young man visited Miriam-Margit’s home. The next day, he ,Winkler. Frank was born in Csorna שרגה ”ran into his friend, Ferenc “Feri7” “Frank Hungary, on August 6, 1913. He was a survivor of Auschwitz, whose wife, son and daughter8 had perished there. The friend mentioned that he had been at the Weiszes the day before and met a girl, Edith, who had been in Tachau, a slave labour camp where he knew Frank had also spent time. Frank realized he knew Edith and went to the Weiszes to find her. Edith wasn’t home, but Miriam-Margit was. After seeing how beautiful she was, he stayed and chatted, figuring her daughters must be equally pretty. Veronica came home first.

It wasn’t clear at first to Veronica if Frank’s frequent visits to the apartment were to see her or Edith. So, in the summer of 1945, she decided to ask Edith directly. Edith responded that she had no interest in Frank—she was headed for Palestine. A teacher from Bicske arranged passage for Jewish refugees to Palestine and Edith and Marta left together in September 1945. Feri, age 17, followed soon after. It was a sad time for Veronica. She stayed behind with her mother in the futile hope that her father had survived and would soon return home.

Frank and Veronica were married on June 9, 1946. Daughter, Mariane-Miriam Weiss- Winkler was born in Budapest on February 16, 1948. Four months later, in June 1948, Frank, who had a successful shirt factory was tipped off by a Jewish Communist friend from Pápa that the quota of workers defining an employer as an anti-Communist capitalist was being lowered weekly and had reached a minimum of 20 employees. Frank had 18 girls working and the friend told Frank the Communists would soon confiscate his business and deport him. He advised Frank to leave town as soon as possible.

Frank wasted no time. He immediately closed the factory for a ‘holiday’ break, and paid his workers two weeks’ vacation wages. The next day, he and Veronica and baby Mariane-Miriam left their apartment behind and headed toward the Austro-Hungarian border, via the same route Veronica had taken on the Todesmarsch in 1944. This time, they headed to Sopron, a small town on the Austro-Hungarian border. Frank had stayed close to all four brothers of his first wife. Two of them lived in Sopron, and it was to one of these brothers that they fled.

7 Feri Weisz was referred to as “kis Feri,” (Little Feri) to distinguish him from Frank “Feri” Winkler. 8 Frank’s children names from his first marriage were Martinka and Peter.

8 In the meantime back in Budapest, Communist officials came looking for Frank. They went to Miriam-Margit and asked where Frank and Veronica had gone. She told them the family was on vacation. The officials stopped by the family’s apartment but found it intact, with everything in its place.

The family overnighted in Sopron and the next day the brothers arranged for a car and driver to spirit Frank, Veronica and Mariane-Miriam out of the country. Frank went first. He was loaded into the back of a taxi, tricked out with a secret compartment in the back. About an hour after Frank, the taxi carried Veronica and baby Mariane-Miriam into Austria and toward a new life. Veronica believes a bribe was paid to the border guard to encourage a smooth journey.

The family carefully made their way to Vienna, which at the time was controlled by the United Kingdom, United States, France and Russia. It was particularly risky for Frank and Veronica as they had no papers and could easily have been scooped up by the Russians and deported. Veronica yearned to move to Israel, and join her sister and brother there. But Frank had a friend in Caracas, Venezuela who encouraged Frank to move there and told Frank he would arrange papers. While they waited for papers to arrive they secured false Austrian papers and rented two rooms in the home of a Christian family, which Veronica is sure had been the former residence of a Jewish family. The wait for papers for South America would be in vain.

After five months in Vienna, the family moved to Paris and continued to wait. Veronica, who spoke fluent German, easily passed for Austrian. But Frank did not speak the language. Again, the family took no chances and Frank made the journey out of Vienna to Munich hidden behind some boxes. It wasn’t until they reached Munich that Veronica finally felt safe. After five months in Paris, the Winkler family made its way from France to Israel, and in 1949 they were reunited there with Marta and Feri. Veronica remembers landing in Israel and finally feeling that she had come home. Frank, Veronica and little Mariane-Miriam lived first near Marta, in Herzliya, and later moved to Rehov Hayarkon, in Tel Aviv. Veronica’s mother remarried and eventually moved to Israel, but was already sick by then and she passed away in 1958.

Post-war life in Israel was a time of rebuilding, and happiness mixed with challenges. Frank set out to build another shirt-making business, but the competition was too strong. Instead, he and a partner managed to build a successful commercial dry cleaning business. Veronica fell pregnant four times but miscarried each time after four months. Doctors at Hadassah Hospital told her the only way she might carry to term was if she remained on bed rest for eight months during her next pregnancy. She listened. Veronica used the time to learn English, which she had begun to study in Hungary. Alexander Winkler was born February 8, 1954 in Tel Aviv, weighing over five kilo!

9 Frank decided it was time to leave Israel following a traumatic event during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Alexander, an 18-year-old parachutist in the IDF was dropped over Sinai together with an army doctor. Unfortunately, the two men ended up in No Man’s Land, somewhere between battling Israeli and Egyptian forces. In an extraordinary display of survival, the two men dug themselves a hiding place in the desert, where they remained until they were rescued 10 days later.

The thought of losing another child was too much for Frank and he told Veronica that he wanted to emigrate from Israel. Frank’s nephew, Louis Winkler, a survivor of Auschwitz, was already settled in Vancouver, and had been encouraging his uncle for years to join him there. Frank had taken in the boy in Budapest after he was orphaned during the war and helped him learn a trade.

It was very difficult for Veronica to leave Israel and she remembers crying a lot when she arrived in Vancouver. She left behind Marta and her family, as well as Feri’s Italian-born wife, Hannah and his three children. Tragically, Feri had suffered a fatal heart attack in 1968, at the age of 38. Today Hannah leads tours of young Israelis to Auschwitz.

Frank, Veronica, Mariane-Miriam and Alexander arrived in Vancouver in the fall of 1975, just after Rosh Hashanah. Frank found work at a dry cleaner and Veronica worked as a sales lady at a boutique, Peggy Spear. She later moved up to a managerial position when the store opened a new location in Richmond.

Mariane-Miriam used her computer skills to land a job at the Bank of Nova Scotia. Alexander remained in Vancouver for only a short time, returning to Israel to marry Yael Nathan, a fellow soldier with whom he had fallen in love before the family emigrated.

Throughout the years of the Holocaust, Veronica never lost hope that she would survive. She never thought past surviving each day. She never lost her faith in God. She credits Marta, whom she says is much stronger than she and who celebrated her 90th birthday in Israel in December 2012, with keeping her alive.

Veronica is fluent in Hungarian, German, Hebrew and English, and identifies today as a Holocaust survivor, Jewish, Israeli and Canadian. Although not as observant as she was as a young girl, she is proudly Jewish. Had her life not been interrupted by the war, Veronica thinks she might have become a teacher. She still loves to learn and has not lost the passion for reading she nurtured in 1944 during the long days of life under restrictive wartime curfew.

In 1989, Frank and Veronica returned to Hungary to visit one of Frank’s sisters, who remained there after the war.9

9 Frank had seven siblings only two of whom survived the Holocaust: The sister in Hungary, who had married a Christian man and was hidden during the war, and another

10 Before this testimonial, Veronica had never told her children the full story of her war years but believes it is critical for survivors to do so. Frank, who succumbed to complications from Alzheimer’s on February 11, 2000, was more open about his experiences. Veronica lives in an assisted living residence in Vancouver, in a tidy apartment filled with family photos and walls covered with her paintings.

Veronica cherishes her family and is a devoted grandmother of one granddaughter and four grandsons. As of this writing, Veronica’s daughter Miriam lives in Vancouver. Miriam’s daughter, Daniella Winkler (28) is a family physician working in Vancouver, BC. Veronica’s son Alex and daughter-in-law Yael live in Chicago, where Alexander is a successful businessman. They have four sons, Meron (30), currently pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Chicago; Carmel (28), a chartered accountant; Aviv (25), a salesman, and Omri (18), a student at the University of Michigan.

This summary is based on interviews with Veronica Winkler conducted in October, 2013. It was written by Hodie Kahn as a supplement to Veronica Winkler’s video interview for the Vancouver Holocaust Education Center Testimony Project.

sister, who survived Auschwitz.