Zsofia, commemorating Klara Biro (Frank).

Klara was my great-great grandmother, my maternal grandfather’s maternal grandmother. She was born in 1907 to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary. Her father and grandfather owned a shop in Andrassy Avenue. She had two younger brothers called Gyorgy and Miklos. Their father died shortly after coming home from serving in WW1. He left his book collection and his love of reading to his children.

As a young girl Klara lived through the communist terror of 1919, and the fascist terror of 1919 – 21. Due to rising levels of antisemitism, she and her family were forced to covert to Calvinism. In the 20s she went to art school and studied bookbinding. I learnt bookbinding in her honour, I hope she would be proud of me.

After graduating she married a Catholic doctor who was abandoned by most of his friends and family after being framed for malpractice. She was one of four people who believed him and stuck by his side.

What I really admire about her, is that she lived in an age where most people thought the only way of surviving is to be selfish, yet she chose to be kind, compassionate and selfless.

In the 1930’s she and the doctor moved to a remote, impoverished area near a village called Pahi. Here, they provided food and medical treatment for free. They even opened a library so poor people could come in and educate themselves. They had two daughters, Judit (my great-grandmother) and Eva. During the Holocaust a Forced Labour camp was established next to their house. (No one in the village knew that Klara was Jewish). She smuggled in letters and food for the men in the camp. If she was caught, she would have been executed.

Her youngest brother Miklos was called up to Munkaszolgalat – a form of military forced labour. He died in the Soviet Union in 1943, he was only 28 years old, his body is probably still in a mass grave in Russia. Her husband died in the same year and she struggled to provide for her children.

In the winter they ran out of firewood and she had to burn her library to keep themselves warm. I can’t imagine how painful it must have been to watch her father’s books burn.

One of the books she chose to keep was the ‘First Hungarian Cookbook for Religious Israelite Households’. If anyone would have found it on her, she and her daughters would have been sent to a concentration camp alongside 440,000 other Hungarian Jews.

In 1944 she hid 2 brothers who ran away from the forced labour camp, again, risking her life.

She survived the war and lived a long life. She lived in a selfish and cruel age, being persecuted for who she was.

BUT she CHOSE to not comply with what her environment was demanding of her and she always remained herself – who was Jewish, kind, compassionate and brave. Staying true to who you are, even when it may cost you your life, is one of the highest levels of Freedom, I think.

In an age when the world is so polarised and our identities are hijacked by social media and politics, her story brings a lot of HOPE.

Zsofia.