Kitty Salsberg was born in Budapest, Hungary, on November 14, 1932. Orphaned after the war, Kitty and her younger sister, Ellen, immigrated to Canada in 1948 through the Canadian Jewish Congress’s War Orphans Project.
Kitty and her younger sister, Ilonka, arrived in Canada with painful memories from the Holocaust, which took both of their parents. Their harrowing time alone in the Budapest ghetto was fresh in their minds, as were their fragile hopes to be adopted. But their lives in Toronto were far from what they expected, and full of broken promises.
Kitty graduated from teachers’ college in 1954 and enjoyed a long and fulfilling career, eventually earning her master’s in education. Kitty raised six children and fostered six teenagers.
She was interviewed for this project at Baycrest in October 2016, and again in January 2017 when she sat down with Jenny Li, Madison Horne and Arielle Meyer.
