PERSONAL STORIES- LEA OFNER-SZEMERE
Lea was born 1922 in Sombor city in Yugoslavia.When she was 3, her parents split and she moved to Vienna with her mother and they moved again in 1938 when the Germans took over Austria. In Leas new home town she studied nursing at one of the city's Jewish hospital, where she later met and married Tamas Szemere, another doctor at the Jewish hospital. Lea was pregnant when Germans troops entered Hungary in 1944, were they were both arrested for being Jewish and deported from Budapest to Auschwitz in a cattle train, with 96 other Jews. They travelled without food or water for 3 days before arriving in Auschwitz. Lea had died en route after delivering, the stillborn baby was at her feet and Tamas beside them, had killed himself.