OCTOBER 27 • 2022 | 13
“A WOMAN OF VALOR
WHO CAN FIND? FOR
HER PRICE IS FAR
ABOVE RUBIES.”
— BOOK OF PROVERBS 31:10
L
ifelong homemakers Edith Kozlowski and Viola Klein aren’t
among the more famous survivors of the Holocaust. But with
continuing gratitude, each managed to build a meaningful
new life in the United States. They raised strong Jewish families
with their late husbands and now have descendants into the fourth
generation.
It was a joy, then, for loving family members, friends and scores
of other well-wishers to celebrate each “woman of valor” recently
for reaching the milestone of 100 years old. Kozlowski on Sept.
20 and Klein on Oct. 4 were born two weeks apart in 1922, both
dates on a Tuesday this year. Viola and Edith belong to a cohort
of approximately 450 survivors of the Shoah in Metro Detroit,
according to Charles Silow, Ph.D., director of Jewish Senior Life’s
Program for Holocaust Survivors and Families in West Bloomfield.
VIOLA (GREENBERGER)
KLEIN
A 100th birthday party for Viola was
held Oct. 2 at her home in The Avalon,
an assisted living facility in Bloomfield
Hills. Also known by her Jewish name
of “Rifka,” Viola was the youngest of five
children born on the family farm of Rose
(Lefkowitz) and Julius Grunberger (a
name that relatives in the U.S. changed
to “Greenberger”). The family lived
in Jasenov, Czechoslovakia. Viola was
a small child when her oldest sibling
Alex, the only boy, left home before
World War II to join his Uncle Adolph
Greenberger in Pittsburgh.
Out of an estimated 100 members in
her extended family, Klein said in an
interview for Portraits of Honor (see
box on page 16) that only 10 survived
the Holocaust. And from her immediate
family — “Only me.”
It gave the girl strength when “her
father told her she would survive,” said
Klein’s daughter, Fran Klein Parker.
Viola’s list of imprisonment in
concentration and labor camps includes
Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland and
Bergen-Belsen in Germany. There, she
told Parker, she had tried feeding soup to
a weak, fellow inmate, Anne Frank.
“My mother has incredible stories and
secrets,” Parker said. Most in their family
always thought Klein was born in 1926,
although a few who knew her in Europe
later told them that Viola was older
than she claimed. Parker’s sister, Susan
Friedlaender, located a document online
of Czech Jews liberated from Bergen-
Belsen who were hospitalized upon
liberation. She found “a record of Viola
Grunberg and her birthday was 10/4/22.”
That discovery confirmed what their
mother “fessed up” only a few years ago.
Hospitalized after taking a fall, personnel
questioned Viola about having different
birth years on her Medicare card and
driver’s license; she needed her daughters
to straighten things out.
After the war ended, in her interview
Viola tells of falling in love at first sight
with the “good-looking” Gerson Klein, a
Holocaust survivor taking the same train
as she was from Prague to Slovakia. She
gave him her address and “he showed
continued on page 14
ABOVE:
Needlepoint
completed by
Viola Klein
10 years
ago. RIGHT:
Gerson and
Viola Klein.
Brother-in-law Howard Friedlaender, brother
Jeff Klein, Susan Friedlaender, son Daniel
Parker, aunt Edith Birnholtz, cousins Marilyn
and Sandy Birnholtz and her daughter
Rebekah Parker at Viola’s 100th birthday.