Sandra Brand (1910–2005)

Sandra Brand, née Roma Babrandt, was born to a Polish Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. During World War II, she also used the names/identities Roma Brand, Cecilia Sasha Szarek, and Cecilya Czarek. In 1939, she was living in Lvov, Poland (present-day Lviv, Ukraine) and working as a sales clerk when the Soviets invaded and occupied the area.
Two years later, Nazi Germany wrested the region away from the Soviets and began to carry out their program of deportations and mass murder of Jews. Sandra survived, though she lost her husband and her only child, four-year-old Bruno. After the war, she emigrated to the USA. She wrote several books, including her memoir I Dared to Live (1978), and gave lectures on the Holocaust. The Simon Wiesenthal Center awards both the Bruno Brand Tolerance Prize and the Sandra Brand Memorial Book Award to nonfiction works on the subject of tolerance, thanks to endowments from her.