Edith Sekules (1916–2008)

Edith Sekules, neé Mendel, was born into a cultured secular Jewish family in Vienna. In 1936, she married Kurt Sekules, a radio engineer, with whom she would have four children. After the Nazi annexation of Austria (Anschluss) in 1938, the couple and their baby daughter fled to Estonia. The family were still there, trying to build a new life, when World War II began. In 1941, they were among tens of thousands of people deported by the Soviet Union to camps in Siberia, where many died. Edith Sekules and her family survived for seven years. At the end of the war, they were allowed to return to Vienna; finding that her parents had left, they settled with Kurt’s family in Northern Ireland. With help from a fellow refugee, they set up their own successful small knitwear business in Kilkeel, County Down. Edith Sekules told her story in the book Surviving the Nazis, Exile and Siberia (2002). She also spoke at Women's Institutes and schools and at Holocaust Memorial Day events in Northern Ireland.