Eleanor is a 78 year old woman who has overcome some tremendous obstacles to get where she is today. At the young age of 9 years old she, her mom, and her dad had to flee their home due to anti-Semitic views that swept through Europe. In 1941, Eleanor and her mother got separated from her father while being forced out of their village by Ukrainian soldiers. Eleanor and her mother walked for nearly 2 1/2 months before being summoned to work on a work farm for Jews in Ukraine during WWII. While on her trek, her father had been in hiding, but had been found and tortured. Miraculously, he survived and later rejoined Eleanor and her mother. For the next 3 1/2 years Eleanor and her family traveled across Ukraine in constant hiding and worked on many farms in order to be protected from Nazi soldiers. In 1944 she and her family heard that the German troops were retreating, but it still was not safe for Jewish families to live out in the open. Finally, in 1946 while at a displaced persons camp in West Germany, Eleanor’s father found a way to move his family to America.
While in America, Eleanor attended high school and some college before she married her first husband. She and her husband had a daughter and son together before they split. Eleanor’s daughter is a teacher in Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv, and unfortunately underwent open heart surgery in July. Eleanor was very unsure if she would ever have the chance to visit her daughter again. In July of 2011, Eleanor’s Wish came true as she was able to be with her daughter during the surgery and spend time with family in Israel.
