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Olga Winkler "I was born on August 28th, 1926. My name is Olga Winkler, and by the grace of God I survived. "It all began in the mid-30s, when Adolph Hitler came to power. My mother, father, and 5 children lived in Satoralyaujhely, Hungary, a city of perhaps 20,000 in a very anti-Semitic country. In 1938 my father received a visa from his half-brother in Cleveland, Ohio. He left. We did not let anyone know that he was going to America. "By then, groups were forming like the Ku Klux Klan, called 'Nyilas Kerest', with sanctions of the government. They burned Jewish families out of their homes at night. "We heard from my father that all he and his brother were able to get after eight months of hard work were two American visas and there were six of us. We could no longer remain in that city, so we left for Budapest in the middle of the night. "My mother had a niece in the city and a sister outside of the city. She and my 14-year old brother left for America and four of us children stayed with my mother's sister. My uncle was a Rabbi in this small town where we stayed. The synagogue was burned out, so we brought the Torahs and other objects into the house. We lived in a house with boarded up windows for 9 months, not going out - two adults and six children, two belonging to my aunt. "In 1940 the four of us children arrived in Cleveland, Ohio. The children were enrolled in school. I eventually became a Group Worker, and worked for Jewish Community Centers and J.F.S. Now I am retired and continue to be very active in the Jewish and non-Jewish Community." |
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