Darvas, Edith

Edith Darvas (née Berger) was born May 29 , 1936, in Budapest Hungary, one of three girls. She entered Hebrew school in 1944, and shortly after that she heard her mom and aunt crying: the reason was that the Germans entered Hungary, and that brought an end to her short time in school. Shortly after that the Germans and their Hungarian allies came out with an ordinance that every Jew had to wear a yellow star if they wanted to go outside, and that was just one restriction of many. Edith’s building was all Jewish and it had to display a yellow star as well.  Across from the building was an empty field and on one occasion all the women had to report there. The women were taken away  to march towards Germany and the men were taken away to forced labour. Edith and her sisters stayed with their maternal grandmother at first, though two weeks later her aunt showed up and took the girls to an orphanage.  A short time after her aunt came back and retrieved them as she found out that all the children were to be taken to a concentration camp. Her aunt tried to find a temporary hiding place for the three girls, and at this time Edith was separated from her sisters. She was taken to stay with total strangers that were not Jewish. She recalls that they spent time in shelters due to the fighting and air raids and that food was scarce. Fortunately for Edith her mother returned in January 1945 and was able to gather her.  Her father followed soon after, and the family was miraculously reunited, and they began to put their lives back together.  Her father went to work, and the three girls returned to school, and they learned to live under the new communist regime that was in place as the Cold War dawned.  Political conflict followed in the form of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, and Edith’s father made the decision to get the family out of Hungary.  Edith was 20 by this time, and already married.  The family decided to leave in two separate groups, and Edith and her husband were caught and returned to Budapest.  They made it out on their next attempt though, and the family set in motion their plans to go to Canada; they were accepted as refugees, and soon enough they began their new lives in Toronto, and that is where we met Edith in December 2025, when she was interviewed by Crestwood students at Baycrest.