Judy Schachter was born April 19, 1936 in eastern Slovakia, where she lived in the city of Humenne. She grew up there alongside extended family and remembers her early life in positive terms, spent with grandparents, uncles and aunts, and cousins.  The political situation in the country of her birth became complicated in those years:  Hitler took the Sudetenland region of the country, and in quick succession the remainder of the country was partitioned, with a good deal of territory ceded to Hungary.  Judy’s family was in Slovakia, under the rule of the rabid antisemite Josef Tiso, an acolyte of Hitler.  Anti-Jewish laws and sentiment began to spike, and the first deportations to Auschwitz-Birkenau began to take place.  Judy and her parents left at this time and lived in central Slovakia, which was under the Nazi regime. There was a failed Slovak uprising against the Nazis, which forced them on the move again – Judy’s identity had also been questioned by classmates at the new school she briefly attended. The fear and uncertainty was constant by this time, so Judy’s father took the family into hiding, and they ventured into the Tatra Mountains.  At one point they were discovered and their supplies were stolen, and on a second occasion they were held at gunpoint; in that harsh environment they also endured shelling, cold and starvation, and the persistent fear of denunciation by local villagers.  After liberation Judy and her family returned to Humenne where they found her uncle and waited for others to return. Antisemitism was still rife, and the Iron Curtain was beginning to fall, so the family made the decision to leave.  First the family went to Paris; Judy’s father had obtained a visitor’s visa to Canada, so he went there first.  In 1949 Judy and her mother were able to reunite with her father who had bought a farm in Blyth, Ontario. Judy was able to make her own life in Canada, where she married Harry Schachter and had 2 children and 4 grandchildren.  Judy Schachter was interviewed by Crestwood students at Baycrest in December 2024.