Holocaust Survivors
Photos: Denis Bancroft
Six female Holocaust survivors were honored as the fourth SHEROES of the Miami SOL season on Tuesday, June 11, in honor of their courageous perseverance and inspirational will to carry on and live fulfilling lives.
Making the special presentation to the Sheroes that night was Rositta Kenigsberg, Director of the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center - where all six women volunteer their time as either speakers or audit editors of survivor testimony transcripts.
We are proud to recognize these exceptional women for their work to keep the history of the Holocaust alive and spreading the importance of never allowing such a tragedy to ever happen again
During the ceremony, the following survivors were honored as SHEROES:
Halina Laster: Arrested in February of 1940, Polish-born Laster was imprisoned until November of that year. She later lived in a ghetto and was taken to several concentration camps, including Auschwitz, until being liberated by the Swedish Red Cross on April 28, 1945.
Ingrid Roskin: Born in the Netherlands, Roskin went into hiding for two and a half years as a young child during the Nazi occupation and was later reunited with her family after the war.
Rita Hofrichter: When she and her family were forced to enter the Warsaw Ghetto, Hofrichter joined the underground resistance movement. After participating in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and smuggling herself out, she joined the Polish resistance, working as a governess for non-Jews who did not know she was Jewish. Hofrichter was later arrested several times, as well as incarcerated in a camp by the Nazis.
Magda Bader: Born in Czechoslovakia, Bader and her family, except for her brothers, were forced into the Munkacs Ghetto on Passover in 1944 and then were later taken to Auschwitz by cattle car. After arriving, she and her sisters were separated from her parents, her oldest sister, and her sister’s child, who were never seen again. At Auschwitz, she and her remaining sisters were selected to go to a munitions factory, from which they escaped shortly before the war ended.
Carol Tellerman: A native of Poland, Tellerman lived in a displaced persons’ camp in Germany after the war and came to the United States in 1947.
Lucy Kalusin: After being forced to live in a ghetto in Poland and upon learning of the deportations taking place around her, she and her sister sought and received refuge from a Ukrainian friend. After the war, Kalusin returned to her home country with a group of survivors and climbed a mountain to get to the Czech border, where they were helped by a Jewish agency.
