ost of the Liebman family's known victims and survivors of the Holocaust were descendants of Aron Friedmann (1840-1910) and Lena Liebman (1840-1925) [from the New Jersey/Cleveland Liebman family tree] and of and Ludevit Glueck (1874-1944) and Linka Liebman (1883-1944) [from the Southern Loveman tree]. There were surely many others, but these are the ones who have been documented. On this page and the next two are the stories of several of them.

ezi Friedman (1895-1972), who took the name Renee, was the fourth of seven children of Adolph Friedmann (1863-1926) and Regina Klein (1867-1944). All but the last of them were daughters, and Renee was the beautiful one.

Born in Zamutov, she grew up in nearby Rozhanovce, but was keen to see more of the world. After her marriage in 1922 to Budapest lawyer Marcel Baroth (1890-1944) she had the life she wanted: a beautiful apartment, two smart and lovely children, Agnes and Thomas, and many friends. Fashion-conscious, she dressed beautifully and was the pride (and perhaps the envy) of her sisters. She attended plays and concerts and was a regular at many of Budapest’s top restaurants.

In 1938, Hungary began to pass laws that restricted the professions in which Jewish people could be employed. As the sphere of activity available to Jews tightened, she began to worry about her family in Slovakia, where the persecution was worse. And finally, Hitler marched into Hungary in March 1944, sending Adolf Eichmann to supervise the deportation of its Jews.

By July 1944, the Hungarians and Germans had deported nearly 440,000 Jews from Hungary. Marcel Baroth did not escape; he was on the last train in that month and died in Auschwitz. Renee and her children were more fortunate. They were able to acquire certificates of protection from Raoul Wallenberg, a Swede who had been recruited by the U.S. War Refugee Board (WRB) and given status as a Swedish diplomat. Wallenberg arrived in Budapest on July 9 and immediately set up more than 30 “safe houses” with WRB and Swedish funds. Thus protected, the three nervously awaited the end of the war in a safe house. Three weeks before the fall of Pest, they were moved to the Budapest ghetto.

The wedding of Agnes Baroth and Arnold Sametz on November 23, 1956. From left are Renee Friedman Baroth, Agnes Baroth, Arnold Sametz and Thomas Baroth.

Renee came to the New York in 1946, having received a derivative citizenship through her father, who had lived in the U.S. for five years in the 1880s before returning to Hungary to marry and start his family. She found work with a decorator who was a distant relative. Although life was hard in America, she did not complain. Her children arrived as non-quota immigrants in 1947.

Her daughter Agnes (1926-) found work and her son Thomas (1929-) attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and received a B.F.A. He was accepted in the Navy and served for more than three years as a Lieutenant, Junior Grade, which made his mother enormously proud and happy. Renee's great joys included the marriage of Agnes to Arnold Sametz (1919-2009), whom she adored, and living a few blocks from her grandchildren, whom she worshipped as they did her, for the last eight years of her life. She suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 1972, fell into a coma and died after 75 days. Her ashes rest in Ferncliff Cemetery, Westchester, New York.

lla Kluger was born in the Slovak town of Sečovce in 1923 to Hermin Friedman (1897-1944) and Miklos Kluger (1886-1944). Her father was a notary public who worked in Veľké Trakany, a village in eastern Slovakia. Because he was employed by the Hungarian government, he was forcibly retired from his post in 1925, after Czechoslovakia was born and Hungarians ceased to govern the region. Although he was provided with a small pension, he was not even 40 years old at the time, and needed to find work to support his family.

In 1929, Ella’s father relocated to Kosice, where he had relatives. He established a business as a debt collector, and she and her mother followed him there; Kosice is where Ella grew up. Shortly before World War II, she began her university education, studying economics for four semesters in Kosice and another two in Budapest. But when the Nazis took over control of Budapest, she returned to Kosice to join her parents.

The three were forced to board a transport for Auschwitz one night in June, 1944. On arrival, she did not see her father – in fact, she never saw him again. She stayed with her mother. At the gate of the concentration camp, however, the infamous S.S. physician Josef Mengele questioned her as to whether the woman she was with was her mother; at age 47, Hermin’s hair had not yet turned grey. When Ella confirmed the relationship, the two were separated. Her mother was directed to the left and was murdered shortly afterward, and Ella was told to go to the right, having been judged fit for work. On the strength of her good penmanship, she was given the job of scribe, and told to record the names and numbers of those who came after her who were either to be killed or to be allowed to live and work.

Ella Kluger Zemanova, left, pictured in 2008 in her home in Bratislava with her daughter, Katka Jurikova and her granddaughter, Andrea Jurikova.

After the war was over and Auschwitz was liberated in January, 1945, Ella was taken by train through Germany, passing through Reichenbach and Hamburg and on to Sweden. Through arrangements made by Swedish diplomats, she was given quarters in a school and work in a raincoat factory in a small town in Sweden. Eventually, she returned to Kosice to search for surviving family members, but finding none, she settled in Bratislava in January, 1946. There, at the Slovak Higher School of Commerce (now the University of Economics in Bratislava) she continued her study of economics and met the man who was to become her husband, Frantisek Zeman (1920-1989), who was also a student at the time.

Ella’s great uncle Manny – Emil Friedman (1877-1975) – who had emigrated to Cleveland, Ohio in 1895, offered to bring her to America, but she and her husband decided to finish their studies before making such a move. This proved to be a fateful decision, because by the time of their graduation in 1948, travel to America had become impossible.

After graduation, Ella went to work for the Czechoslovak government, first with the Slovak Planning and Statistics Bureau and later the Ministry of Construction. She and her husband both joined the Communist Party, but because he was a supporter of Alexander Dubček, a Slovak politician who lead Czechoslovakia briefly during the “Prague Spring” period from 1968-1969, he was expelled from the Party after Dubček was ousted by the Soviets. Ella, too, had run afoul of the changing politics in Czechoslovakia, having lost a job in the 1950s after being falsely accused of aiding Rudolf Slánský, the former general secretary of the Party who fell into disfavour and was executed. She had not, in fact, known Slánský, however, and was eventually rehabilitated.

Ella made Bratislava her home after the war. She gave birth to her daughter Katarina (Katka) in 1952 and a son, Pavol (Palo) in 1955, and today she is grandmother to three grandchildren. She died on May 12, 2013.