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.