Agnes Tomasov

Agnes Tomasov, née Grossmann, was born to a Jewish family in the small town of Bardejov, Czechoslovakia (present-day Slovakia). She spent summers during her early childhood with her maternal grandparents, Zelma and Armin Kohn, and beloved uncles Jozko and Bandi  in Levice, close to the Czech border with Hungary. Her happy childhood was ripped apart at age nine when Nazi Germany invaded her homeland. She never saw her maternal relatives again. Most of the Jews in Bardejov were deported but young Agnes, her father and stepmother, and brother Ivan managed to get to a small town in the interior of Slovakia, on the edge of the rugged Low Tatra Mountains, where they could pass as Christians. In October 1944, fearing the German soldiers nearby would discover them, the family fled into the forests with other desperate Jews, building crude shelters and foraging for food and fuel. Along with a band of partisans, the Grossmanns made the daring decision to escape high into the mountains. They made a perilous hike along ice-covered peaks at 3,000 meters in the hope of reaching safety behind the Soviet lines. They succeeded and were among the small minority of Slovak Jews who survived the Holocaust. Agnes married Joseph Tomasov in Levice in 1949 and they lived in Prague. In 1968, following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Agnes was again on the run, this time with her husband and their two children. They defected to Canada, carrying only what they could fit in two suitcases, and settled in Toronto. Her memoir, From Generation to Generation (French translation, De génération en génération) was published in 2010 by the Azrieli Foundation Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program.