Helen Roth was born towards the end of the Great Depression.  Helen was only in elementary school when World War 2 began. She had 2 sisters and four brothers and out of all of them only her and her brother are still alive today. Helen’s father passed away when she was 3, so he did not have to go through the Holocaust, but her mother and siblings did. They were first sent to a ghetto, and later to the camps.  Right away when Helen arrived in Auschwitz, she was separated from all of her family except her sister. Helen went through everything from working so long in the winters she would get frostbite to physically watching people be shot right in front of her on the death marches at war’s end.   She was resilient, and made a life for herself after the war, getting married and having a child.  When the communist grip settled over Romania, she and her husband escaped, making their way to Israel and eventually Canada.

Helen Roth was referred to us by the Azrieli Foundation, and she was interviewed in February 2015 at Baycrest’s Cafe Europa by Maddie Elman, Sam Katz, Rachael Pape, and Alex Sanders.