Born September 2, 1923   |   Vysny Studeny (Studniya), Czechoslovakia (now Verkhniy Studenyy, Ukraine)

Died September 10, 2022   |   Edmonton, Canada

Helen encouraged her children to live life to the fullest. Even after unimaginable suffering and trauma, she showed them the way by living her own life with tremendous energy and optimism. 

Helen had a happy childhood on her parents’ farm where she helped with the chores and cooking, played with her three sisters and three brothers, rode her horse Suria and skied on homemade skis. Among her happiest memories were her mother’s delicious Shabbat meals. In 1941, while Helen was staying with an aunt in a nearby town, the rest of her family and all their Jewish neighbours were rounded up and murdered by drowning in the Dniester River. A neighbour confiscated their home, burning their family photos. Captured by the Nazis in 1944, Helen was forced into the Iza Ghetto. Three months later she was beaten on the head with a bat, left overnight in pouring rain and forced onto a packed cattle car on a train bound for Auschwitz. Prisoner 1012, as she was then known, suffered further humiliation, starvation and violence in  forced labour at a munitions plant in Salzwedel, Germany.

Skeletal and dying when liberated by American troops in April 1945, Helen convalesced in hospital for six months. Reuniting with her old beau and ballroom dancing teacher, Alexander Markovich, she married him on November 30, 1945. They lived in the Heidenheim Displaced Persons Camp in Germany and then in Amsterdam prior to immigrating to Canada in 1951. Settling in Edmonton, they raised three children—Sol, Eli and Gail—and helped other new immigrants by offering room and board. Helen outlived her beloved Alexander by nearly 42 years. Still, she led a full life, volunteering at Beth Israel Synagogue and for Na’amat—an organization that supports women and children in Israel and the Diaspora. Loved by everyone who knew her, Helen was the cherished baba of four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.