My mother, Suzsi Groszberg, was a feisty, strong-minded woman of exceptional courage. This fortitude enabled her to survive the furnace of Europe and rebuild a true Torah family. Much has been made of her daring escapades in Nazi-occupied Budapest, including one memorable occasion when she snatched papers from an unsuspecting soldier who was sleeping. Less known, however, is her heroism on a wintry February day in 1956.

My mother’s family had lived in a suburb of Budapest. As the rumblings of war neared, a wealthy childless neighbor pleaded with her father to use his fortune to spirit my mother and her siblings out of the country. He suggested that Zaide divide his children so a remnant would remain, just as Yaakov Avinu had done. Zaide refused. Better his children should remain near him, he said, and die as Jews. 

The girls all procured papers posing as “gypsies.” They resembled each other too much to pass as random strangers, so they dispersed, hiding in various towns and neighborhoods around the Hungarian capital. The boys, with their Jewish looks, had no such alternative. 

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