Helen Farkas

Helen Farkas (née Safar) was born on October 18, 1920 in Satu Mare, Romania. She experienced the Hungarian occupation and the rise of anti-Semitism until being forced into a ghetto in Hungary with her parents, two sisters, and a brother. She was engaged to be married in 1944 but her fiancé, Joe, was sent to do forced labor, and she and her family were deported to Auschwitz. Toward the end of the war in January 1945 she was part of a death march to Silesia, where she and her sisters were able to escape and stay hidden until the war ended. After liberation, Helen made her way to Romania by walking and hopping freight trains. When she finally arrived home, she was reunited with Joe and they married and escaped Romania shortly after it came under communist rule.

Helen Farkas lectured widely on her experiences during the Holocaust and was a driving force in Holocaust education in the San Francisco Bay Area until her death in 2018. As part of her mission to educate she wrote her memoir, Remember the Holocaust. All proceeds from book sales go to the work of the Farkas Center. It is available on our Survivors page.