Page 10 - Torch Magazine #28 - Summer 2025

Fleeing the war cry
How a Holocaust survivor became
a victim of ‘globalising the intifada’
I
n 1938, just prior to the start of
World War II, Italian dictator Benito
Mussolini stripped all Jews of their
citizenship. Among them was a two-
year-old girl, who would have known very
little at the time about the antisemitic
storm that was brewing over Europe.
However, the increasing persecution of
Jews would define her childhood.
The little girl was born in Gyor, Hungary,
and the family moved to the small Italian
island of Lussinpiccolo, which is now
known as Mali Lošinj in Croatia, to open
a hotel. The small island should have
been a place of safety for Italy’s Jewish
community, one of the oldest in Europe,
but like all Jews under Mussolini’s fascist
regime, their lives were at great risk.
The family made the big decision to
flee the island and move back to Hungary.
Hungary was also no longer safe after
the country aligned with Nazi Germany
and passed anti-Jewish laws. Hearing the
10 10 CUFI.ORG.UK
Nazi war cry, they again fled, this time
to France. France should also have been
safe for them, but the Nazis invaded in
1940. Once again, they were escaping
antisemitism, but this time the young
family were fleeing for their lives.
As the German occupation intensified,
Jewish refugees had nowhere else to go.
They made their way through Spain to
Portugal in the hope that they might be
able to find a country that would accept
them to live permanently. Unique among
nations, the Dominican Republic accepted
around 800 Jewish families through the
Sosua Settlement Project. The little girl’s
family was one of those fortunate enough
to be accepted. In 1941, when she was
aged 5, the family managed to secure
passage on the Portuguese cargo liner
SS Nyassa and sailed across the Atlantic
Ocean, via New York, eventually settling
with other Jewish refugees in Sosua,
Dominican Republic. The undeveloped