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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Part
I
Part
II
Part
III
Part
IV
Part
V
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Volume 9e
Dolly Tiger
We Lived
in Historical Times
published by the
Concordia University Chair in Canadian Jewish Studies
Copyright �
Dolly Tiger, 2000
Key Words
Budapest, Subotica (town in Yugoslavia),
Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Venezuela, Caracas, Vienna, Montreal.
Abstract
Born in 1930 in Budapest to a wealthy family of
jewellers. After her mother’s divorce, Tiger and her twin sister would spend much of
their childhood in the care of a governess and maternal grandfather. In 1938, Tiger, her
sister and a cousin were sent to Yugoslavia, where her mother married a local jeweller.
Her family settled in Subotica in Vojvodina. Tiger and her sister were baptized as
Catholics and took the surname of their step-father. Returned to Budapest after the death
of their grandfather and she and her sister were enrolled in a convent. In March 1944,
Germany occupied Hungary and there was sudden rise in violent antisemitism. Describes how
armed gangs were roaming through Budapest looking for Jews to rob and/or murder. After the
arrest of their mother, Tiger and her sister were cared for by a friend of their
step-father’s who then molested them. Describes spending the siege of Budapest in an
air-raid shelter in her aunt’s building in Buda. After the war ended, her aunt
brought her and her sister to Subotica where she witnessed the return of camp survivors.
Returned to Budapest at the age of 17 and went to Switzerland where she married a boy from
Subotica.
She and her husband then went to Venezuela and had
two children. Describes the various jobs she held in Caracas, working in a bookstore, a
furniture factory, etc. Her marriage quickly disintegrated and she divorced. Got a job
with Texaco as a bilingual secretary and started to write a column for an English language
paper in Caracas. Her husband got custody of her children. During the Hungarian revolution
in 1956, she went to Vienna to help get her sister out of Europe. When she returned to
Venezuela, she married Joe Tiger. Moved to Canada with him and had two daughters. Her son
from her first marriage joined her in Canada when he turned 21. There is no description of
her life in Canada, except that she made several friends in the Hungarian community in
Montreal.
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