Tapestry of Survival

"A Tapestry of Survival is a memoir by Holocaust survivor Leslie Mezei and his two sisters, Magda Mezei Schwarz and Klari Mezei Noy, and includes an excerpt of the survival story of his first wife, Annie Wasserman Mezei, who was in hiding in Poland. The Mezei family lived in Gödöllő, a small town close to Budapest, Hungary, where Leslie was born in 1931. Leslie grew up amid rising persecution of Hungary's Jews, but Leslie's life changed dramatically when World War II reached Hungary, and the Nazis invaded in March 1944. Leslie and his family fled to Budapest, but Leslie's father was immediately taken by the Nazis and deported to Auschwitz. One of his brothers had already been taken to a forced labour battalion, and one of his sisters was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, and the rest of the family was forced into yellow star buildings with the other Jews of Budapest. Nearly escaping death at the hands of the Arrow Cross fascists, they found refuge in Swiss and Vatican protected houses, until they were forced into the Budapest ghetto. They managed to pose as non-Jewish refugees and escape the ghetto. Eventually the surviving family members reunited and made their way to Palestine on the famous Exodus ship, only to be sent back to Europe by the British. Leslie and his siblings then immigrated to Israel and Canada where they started new lives."--