Elsa Thon (1923–2019)

Elsa Thon, née Balbina Synalewicz, was born to a Jewish family in Pruszków, Poland. At age 16, she was a photographer's apprentice when the Nazis occupied her hometown in World War II. In January 1941, she was deported to the Warsaw Ghetto along with her parents, Nachman and Sonia, and her sister, Regina; the latter three were all later murdered. Elsa was recruited by the Jewish underground and smuggled out of the ghetto to a farm in Czerniaków for resistance activities. After several months on the farm, Elsa received orders to go to Kraków, where she lived under a false identity as a Polish Catholic. She worked in a photography studio before being arrested by the Gestapo, and spent the rest of the war at Płaszów and other forced labor camps. She endured a death march to the Elbe River in early 1945. She and others in her group were first rescued by retreating Italian soldiers and then by Red Army troops. At the end of the war, she married one of her protectors, Mayer Thon, a Soviet tank commander. Together they went to a displaced persons camp in Germany, then moved to Israel in 1948. They later moved to Argentina, where they had two children. In 1980, they moved to Canada to be closer to their daughter. Elsa wrote a memoir, If Only It Were Fiction (aka I Wish It Were Fiction), containing poems, fables, and family stories, that was first published in 1997 and translated into Polish and Spanish. The book was reprinted in 2013 as part of the Azrieli Foundation Series of Holocaust Survivor Memoirs.