Judy's Story and Full Video Testimony
Judy was born in 1938 in Berehove, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine), and grew up with one younger brother in a close-knit Jewish family. In May 1944, during the final deportation of Jews from their region, Judy’s entire family was transported to Auschwitz. She was just six years old.
Judy’s survival was made possible by the extraordinary courage of her grandmother, who managed a wooden barrel factory. She arranged for the wife of the factory foreman, a Christian woman, to smuggle Judy out of harm’s way.
Assuming a false identity, Judy was hidden in the Sacré Coeur convent in Budapest, where she remained until the end of the war. She became the only survivor from her immediate family—and the sole survivor from her entire hometown of 11,000 people.
In 1946, after liberation, Judy was found in the convent by her aunt and uncle, who took her in. A year later, she emigrated to Venezuela to begin a new life. In 1952, she was admitted to the United States and settled first in Detroit, then in New York, before returning to Venezuela, where she met her husband and built a family. Together they raised three children. Judy is now the proud grandmother of seven and great-grandmother of one.
In 2017, as Venezuela plunged into political and economic turmoil, Judy relocated permanently to the United States.
