Bertha Sklar, a Holocaust survivor, passed away Sept. 26, 2015, in Denver. Rabbi Yaakov Meyer officiated at the Sept. 27 graveside service at Rose Hill Cemetery. Feldman Mortuary made the arrangements.
Bertha was born Oct. 1, 1923, in Vienna, Austria. Her mother owned a manicure salon and her father ran an electrical store.
A member of Vienna’s thriving Jewish community, she attended a Talmud Torah day school. She also learned that being called a dirty Jew was something she had to endure.
Hitler invaded Austria in 1939. That night, Berthas father instructed the family to draw the curtains and turn off all the lights. As the Nazi threat intensified, her parents closed their stores and fled with the family to Budapest.
Aided by relatives in Budapest, Berthas parents found jobs while she stayed home and cared for the younger children. She joined Hapoel Hamizrachi to help Jews who were trapped.
The Nazis occupied Hungary in 1944. Living conditions deteriorated, and the Sklar family went underground. One night the Gestapo arrested Berthas father. He was sent to Auschwitz.
The family became separated, Bertha told Leslie Ginsburg. ”My younger sister and I lived in an underground ghetto and on the streets. We used newspapers as shoes and ate out of garbage cans. The park benches became our beds . . .
”My mother hid in a rat-infested basement with my baby sister.”
Hapoel Hamizrachi finally located Bertha and her sister. The group hid them with a gentile family. When they discovered the girls were Jewish, the family threw them out on the streets.
Once the Soviets liberated Budapest, Bertha struggled to explain her situation to a Russian soldier. He reunited Bertha and her sister with their mother and baby sister.
Bertha, who was still active in Hapoel Hamizrachi, organized a group departing Hungary for Palestine by boat. However, she and her family boarded the ship illegally and were detained in Greece for several months.
That’s where Bertha met her husband Sender Sklar, a Holocaust survivor.
The Greeks finally relented and allowed the Sklars to take a ship bound for Palestine. Placed in a detention camp, Bertha worked in the infirmary, eventually becoming a nurse.
The Sklars came to the US around 1979 and settled in Denver.
Mr. Sklar passed away on Aug. 8, 1998.
Bertha Sklar is survived by two children, son Mike (Alana) Sklar and daughter Sally (Morton) White; sister Tova Rosenfeld of Denver and brother Alfred Lock of New York; grandchildren Sandy Tal and Adina Gross; and seven great-grandchildren.
Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News
