Olga Rothstein

Of Blessed Memory 1922 – 2009

Olga Stark was born in 1922 in Sárospatak, Hungary.  Her parents, who owned a local winery, enjoyed comfortable relationships with their non-Jewish neighbors and Olga was educated in Catholic schools. Though they were aware of the persecution of Jews in other European countries, the Starks believed that could not happen in Hungary. In 1944, when the Nazis reached their town, the Stark’s non-Jewish neighbors blocked their home from the Nazis. After their ghettoization they were also  warned repeatedly about impending deportations. Olga and her family were eventually deported to Auschwitz. Upon her liberation Olga found that she had lost her parents and a sister in the Holocaust. She met her future husband, Michael Rothstein, while in the camps and after living in Italy they made their way to the United States, settling in Kansas City.