Vera Weislitzova (1927–2009)

Věra Weislitzová was born to a Jewish family in Ostrova, Czechoslovakia. Her parents were Olga and Leo Weislitz, and she had a sister. Her happy childhood and adolescence in a harmonious family was shattered by Nazi Germany's invasion, being expelled from school, and the premature death of her mother. In 1942, she was deported to the Nazi concentration camp at Terezín (Theresienstadt) and later to Auschwitz, which she managed to survive. After the war, she learned that except for herself and her sister, all of her relatives -- a total of 120 people in their extended family -- had died in the Holocaust. Weislitzová met her future husband Arnošt Lustig after she had traveled to Israel to fight in the Israeli War of Independence. The couple married in 1949. In Prague, Weislitzová made a living mainly as a foreign language teacher and translator from Hebrew, German. and English. In 1968, during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the couple were in Italy with their two children, and decided not to return home. They settled first in Haifa, Israel, then in 1970 moved to the USA. There Weislitzová wrote poems and short stories but kept them to herself. It was only when the family returned to Czechoslovakia for the first time after the fall of Communism that she began to publish her work. Among these was the collection of poems Dcera Olgy a Lea (The Daughter of Olga and Leo, 1994) about her family's fate.