VICTORIA CAPLIN
TWO YEARS ago, just before my batmitzvah, my parents and I sat down and discussed twinning my simchah with a young girl who had been killed in the Holocaust so that we could remember her and also add to the appreciation of how lucky I was to be celebrating my batmitzvah.
My Mum got in touch with Yad Vashem and a week later a large envelope came through the door. There was a testimonial page which gave me all the details about a young girl.
Her name was Victoria Veronica Adler, born 28th July 1936. The certificate enclosed showed that she was born in Budapest, but during the war she lived in a town called Nyirmada in Hungary. Her parent’s names were Piroska (nee Klein) and Jeno Adler. The certificate from Yad Vashem showed that her mother survived the war as she had signed her daughter’s notification of death.
Also included in the folder was a beautiful certificate from Yad Vashem and some other information about the different towns in the area near Nyirmada where many Jews lived.
At my batmitzvah I gave a d’var Torah, I felt honoured to remember Victoria Adler who wasn’t as lucky as me because cruelly, at the age of nine years old, she had been murdered by the Nazis.
This wasn’t the end of my batmitzvah journey; in many respects it was the beginning. My parents and I decided to go to Budapest to trace a little of Victoria’s history. In preparation for the trip, about 18 months after my batmitzvah, I took out the folder from Yad Vashem again to review the information. My father noticed that at the bottom of the testimonial page someone had written in small letters “Kansas City, USA”.
My Dad typed into Google, “Victoria Adler, Kansas City” but nothing came back. But for Victoria’s parents’ names, Piroska and Jeno Adler and Kansas City, incredibly, there was a mention, a yahrzeit memorial at the Kehilath Israel Synagogue in Kansas City with a message reading “Piroska and Jeno Adler remembered by children and grandchildren”.
This was a very exciting possible connection.
My Mum immediately emailed the shul in Kansas telling them about the twinning and saying that we were looking for any relatives. The shul got back to us within the hour to say they had a member who they believed had lost a sister called Victoria in the Holocaust. The lady was Erika Adler Clayman and she was Victoria Adler’s sister. Erika, over many emails with Mum, gave us as much history as she knew. The week we contacted her, it happened to be the yahrzeit for her mother and she felt her mother had a hand in this from on high. She was born two years after the end of the war. Miraculously, her parents Piroska and Jeno had both survived Auschwitz and its labour