The Kallos Family Book 2022

IV • THE KALLOS FAMILY
Barbara ‘Biri’ Lorber (née Kallos) in Netanya, Israel, aged 95.
PHOTO BY HER DAUGHTER, TIKI EYON, TAKEN ON 10 JULY 2022.
This carefully researched family history recounts
the story of Holocaust survivor Barbara ‘Biri’
Kallos, who was born in Ťačovo, Czechoslovakia,
on 25 August 1926. The Czechoslovakia Biri grew up
in was a liberal democracy, where all minorities
were protected. Her idyllic childhood, shared
with family and friends on the Tisa River, which
is surrounded by the Carpathian mountains,
farms, fields and orchards, was torn apart by Nazi
Germany and its ally Hungary, both nations hell
bent on murdering all Jews so that Europe would
be Judenrein (cleansed of Jews). For the most
part, the world’s non-Jewish population enthusiastically
participated in or remained indifferent to
their plight.
In The Kallos Family you will read about the
Kallos’ unimaginable hardships, from being forced
to leave their family hotel, to their transportation
to Auschwitz–Birkenau, to their return when the
changes they found there were to become painful
memories.
The book also tells the stories of the Ickovics
and the Ruttners, close family friends who
suffered the same fate as the Kallos family. In
spite of it all, the survivors recovered and, after
emigrating to countries far away, went on to lead
fulfilling lives, remarkably free of bitterness and
resentment.