Mira Kovács

Born: Unknown 1927, Temesvár (Timișoara), Romania

Mira was born in Temesvár, Romania, and was ten years old when her family moved to Budapest. She attended the girls’ civil school at Aréna Street and was very active in the scouts movement. She later recalled: "Then from one day to the other I was fired from among the scouts, Jews could not be scouts.” As a result of the measures against the Jews she was forced to give up her bicycle as well. She was seventeen years old when her mother died in March 1944, after being very sick for just a short time.

On March 19, 1944 the German troops invaded Hungary. Mira had to wear a yellow star, required to be worn by all Jews, and she and her father had to move into a yellow star house. Her father was arrested for political reasons and kept in prison for three months. In October all the men from the yellow star house, including Mira's father, were taken away. Not much later, women between the age of sixteen and fifty were gathered on the KISOK sports field to be taken to forced labor. This is where Mira reunited with her sister, who had been working for a wealthy family. They were forced to dig roadblocks at Gyömrő and the group was herded towards the west from there on foot. Mira had her eighteenth birthday at the Lichtenwörth work-camp in Austria. The camp was liberated by the Soviet troops on April 2, 1945. Despite the fact the Mira had a high fever due to typhus, she and her sister along with two other girls began their journey home. They later learned about their father’s death in Budapest. After Mira recovered from her illness, she went to the Zionist orphanage in Bácskai Street, where she became a madricha (educator) for orphaned children. She later studied to become a kindergarden teacher which was her profession for the rest of her life.