Can one family not only survive the wrenching devastation of the Holocaust, but persevere and thrive?
Judit Gondos, known as Jutka, was an ordinary little girl in Budapest, Hungary, when her life was gradually destroyed, beginning with the institutionalization of antisemitism in Hungary. Like all Jews then in Europe, she and her family had endured years of humiliation accompanying the ratcheting up of anti-Jewish sentiments and restrictions on their livelihoods and freedoms. But when the Nazis occupied Hungary in 1944, their lives, and the lives of their family, friends, and the entire community, were in peril.
In Jutka, we follow the lives of the Gondos-Havas family, first in Hungary as merchants, educators, physicians, and professionals, then through their harrowing experiences during the Holocaust. We're shown inside the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where young Jutka and her parents were incarcerated. And we then see the challenges of building a new life after war's end as Jutka becomes Judy Gondos Jacobs: an American citizen, college graduate, wife, mother, business professional, PhD, grandmother, great-grandmother, and one of a diminishing number of voices able and willing to bear witness to the Holocaust in hopes that humanity is not again overcome by evil.
Judy Gondos Jacobs, PhD, is a retired pathology practice business manager who has spent decades sharing her account of the Holocaust. In recognition of her efforts, the University of Missouri-Kansas City bestowed her with the Defying the Odds Award in 2016. Judy lives in Overland Park, Kansas.