Malvina Stras

Of Blessed Memory 1923 – 2008

Malvina Neiman grew up in a large family in Szatmárnémeti, Hungary (also known as Satu Mare, Romania), where her father ran a grocery and liquor business and the family lived in an apartment over the store. Her parents were strictly Orthodox and Shabbat was observed with special foods, songs, and spiritual readings. In 1944, when Malvina was 18, the Germans occupied Hungary and forced Szatmárnémeti’s Jews into a ghetto. From there, they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where all but three of the sisters perished. In April 1945, when the British liberated her in Bergen-Belsen, Malvina was ill with typhus and blind in one eye. She met her husband, Walter Stras, in a displaced persons camp in Germany and they married in February 1947. Although they planned to go to Israel, a connection to a Kansas City family brought them to the United States.