Born April 19, 1928   |   Mukacevo (Munkacs), Czechoslovakia (now Mukacheve, Ukraine)

Died January 7, 2024   |   Calgary, Canada

Family always came first for Magda, but she enjoyed other simple pleasures, like playing cards and vacationing with the circle of survivors who had also become her family.

Magda and her younger siblings Yolly and Beryl were the children of Shmuel and Molly Honig, religiously observant tailors in Munkacs, previously a part of Hungary. In 1944 the Nazis gathered all the Jews, forced them into a nearby factory and later herded them onto a cattle train bound for Auschwitz. Like all the prisoners, Magda’s head was shaved and she was forced to wear a striped uniform. Three months later she was among 200 women forced to work in an airplane munitions factory in Breslau where she laboured for nine months under horrid conditions. The women were made to walk three hours each way to work. Due to starvation and other privations, Magda fell too ill to work, languishing for a month. A friend visited when she could, in the hope that she would still find Magda alive.

Liberated by the Red Army on May 9, 1945, Magda was the sole survivor of her family. She made her way to Budapest, Hungary and then to Austria with the intention of immigrating to Palestine (later Israel). At a Displaced Persons camp in Santa Maria de Luca, Italy, Magda and Kalman Jablonka married in December 1945, welcoming their first son, Albert, the following year. Unwilling to risk the struggles of settling in Palestine, the Jablonka family opted instead to immigrate to Canada where other survivor friends had reunited with family. On April 20, 1950, the Jablonkas arrived in Calgary. There they welcomed their second son, Sam, in 1954. Magda, whose challahs and other Jewish dishes were legendary, often pitched in alongside Kalman and their sons at Quality Food, their family grocery store. A widow since 2016, she sadly also lost Sam far too soon, in 2022.