Ibolya (Szalai) Grossman (1916–2005)

Ibolya "Ibi" Grossman, née Szalai, was born to a Jewish family in Pécs, Hungary, one of five sisters. Her parents Ignacz and Laura Szalai had a small tinsmith shop. At about age 15, she joined the Hungarian Zionist youth movement, in which she met Zoltan "Zolti" Rechnitzer, who would later become her husband. In 1933, she left school and moved to Budapest to live with her older sister Aranka. After the Rechnitzer family also moved to Budapest, Ibi and Zolti began courting and were married in September 1939. They had a son, András (Andy), in 1942. In March 1944, Nazi Germany occupied Hungary, and in May, Zolti was taken away to forced labor with the Hungarian Army; Ibi never saw him again. She was confined with her baby and mother-in-law in the Jewish ghetto in Budapest under terrible conditions. Her parents and two oldest sisters were deported to Auschwitz, where they died. In January 1945, the Budapest ghetto was liberated by the Red Army. The increasingly anti-Semitic atmosphere in Hungary after the war led the Rechnitzer family to change their surname to Réti. Ibi attempted to escape with Andy from the Soviet-dominated country in 1949, but was betrayed and jailed for six months. She made a second, successful attempt during the Hungarian Uprising and emigrated with her son to Canada in 1957. In 1958, she married Emil Grossman, also a survivor. She spoke publicly about her experiences for many years. Her memoir An Ordinary Woman in Extraordinary Times (1990) received a Canadian Jewish Book Award. Andy Réti wrote a sequel called The Son of an Extraordinary Woman (2002), and the two books were published together in 2016 in one volume called Stronger Together as part of The Azrieli Foundation Series of Holocaust Survivor Memoirs.