Born Nora Tausz in 1924, in what was then the Italian town of Fiume — and what is today Rjeka, Croatia — her grandfather was a traditional and observant Jew. But her father, who married a Jewish woman, ended up getting baptized and converted to Catholicism as part of a family feud — involving some small amphibians. That was before Tausz Ronai was born, leaving her “technically Catholic.”
“My father’s dislike for religion started during his childhood. When he was preparing for his bar mitzvah, the rabbi complained that he did not study enough. My grandma was furious and threw the salamanders he carefully collected out of the window and the cats ate them,” Tausz Ronai explained.
After Nora’s birth, Edoardo Tausz became the president of a Hungarian insurance agency. But in 1935, the Hungarian government issued a law by which non-citizens could no longer work in high-ranking positions. The company offered him a chance at Hungarian citizenship, but he rejected the move as opportunistic, quit his job and joined an Italian insurance company.
In 1938, the promulgation of racial laws in Italy stripped Jews of their citizenship. Tausz lost his job overnight with no compensation, his pension savings account was seized, and his kids Nora and Giorgio were thrown out of school.
“There was nothing to do. The government said that we were of ‘Jewish race.’ We were not connected with the official Jewish community. When my grandfather died, no one could afford his Jewish burial. Even my cousin, who was very Catholic and attended the Benedictine school, was kicked out overnight by the priest. He ended up in Auschwitz,” Tausz Ronai said in
an interview with the Primo Levi Center in 2020.
Lacking nationality and resources, Edoardo Tausz prepared his family to leave, reaching out to several countries, including Australia, Argentina and the United States. He even found a New York telephone book and called various Tausz families for help, but never received an answer.
After Italy entered the war, in the summer of 1940, the mayor ordered the round-up of all the Jewish men in Fiume.
“They came before dawn, perhaps 4 a.m., about six men in uniform with bayonets and revolvers in their hands. They took my father and went for my brother. My mother begged for Giorgio as he was ‘just a child,’ although he was actually 18. [The soldiers] gave up and left [Giorgio] behind,” Tausz Ronai recalled.
Giorgio was eventually caught at a train station while trying to escape. Though “technically Catholic,” his papers carried the word “Jew,” so he was taken to the Torretta detention camp, where his father was also imprisoned.
(full article online)
Nora Tausz Ronai started swimming competitively at age 69 and has won 13 gold medals, broken 12 world records at Masters World Championships - and just keeps swimming
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