Living in Many Worlds

From our partner, Arizona Jewish Historical Society

Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10AM (MST)

SPEAKER: 2G and PHA Vice President Eva Flaster

Eva Flaster is the daughter of two Holocaust survivors. Her father, Chune

Flaster, was born in December of 1912 in Nowy Sacz, a city in the

Carpathian Mountains of Poland. He loved the mountains and enjoyed

the outdoors, skiing, and hiking. He lived at home with his mother and his

two siblings until he enlisted in the Polish Army. When the Germans

attacked, the Polish Army only lasted three weeks. The Poles disbanded,

and he moved eastwards and was captured by the Russians who

invaded Poland from the East. They sent him to a gulag in the frigid,

frigid north of Russia. The Russians released him in 1941and he fought

the Nazis for a second time.

Meanwhile, Eva’s mom, Genia Nordon, was born in Sosnowiec

(Southwestern) Poland in 1924. She lived with her parents and three

siblings. She was four days shy of her fifteenth birthday when the war

began. The Nazis removed them from their home and forced them into a

less desirable apartment. Life was exceedingly difficult, and food was

scarce. Jews were no longer allowed to go to school. The family was

moved one more time in1942. This time to a sealed ghetto.

From 1939 to 1942, Genia often hid her star with a purse and tried to

barter for food for the family. In 1942, the Nazis captured her, and she

became a slave laborer in a chemical plant. In January of 1945, the

Nazis knew they were losing the war. They removed prisoners from the

camps and took them on the “death march” to erase all evidence of the

concentration camps. During the “death march,” Genia tried to escape by

jumping from a moving train. The Nazis recaptured her, and she went

through a series of prisons, and eventually, she wound up in the small

fortress at Terezin.

Two years after the war, thanks to a family friend also living in the

American sector of Germany, Chune and Genia met each other. They

dated, got engaged and married in 1948. Eva was born the following

year in the same Displaced Persons’ camp in Landsberg Am Lech.

Please join us on Sept. 22, when Eva will share more about her parents’

story and growing up as the child of survivors.

Registration: Arizona Jewish Historical Society — AZJHS Our Parent’s Stories