Most of us can relate to a time and place where something miraculous occurred. It is not often that we read about these occurrences in an obituary. One caught my attention last week as I was reading the Dallas Morning News. Let me share a bit of this story with you.
Edith Kay Molnar died in her sleep last Tuesday in Dallas. She was eighty-five. It is indeed a miracle she lived that long, or even into her adult years. Edith Kay was born in Hungary of Jewish parents. The Nazis invaded the country and took her parent's business. They loaded the family on to a boxcar for about a ten day trip to Auschwitz. There was no light or bathroom facilities. A little food would be thrown in occasionally. The little girl developed a fever and chicken pox sores at Auschwitz. She was told she would go to the crematorium. A camp doctor gave her a one-night reprieve. The next day her fever and sores were gone and she was spared. She had spent the night crying and praying. Several months later she was again sick and taken to the camp hospital. That night they took ten from the hospital to a gas chamber. She was one of the ten. For a reason she never knew they turned away from the chamber and took her to another camp. It was the night before Yom Kippur. It was also the night her mother was taken away. She never saw her again.
The third miracle happened in a gas chamber, The women and girls were there for a shower. She was innocently supposed to turn another faucet. It would release deadly gas. Someone yelled, "Don't touch the faucet!" They quickly ran out of the place and their lives were spared.
When the camp was liberated she was near death and spent a month in the hospital in a coma-like state. Returning to Hungary she learned her father had died in a labor camp. She went back to school. None of her relatives ever came back. She had no family left at all. Mrs. Molnar later went to Israel where she married a British soldier. They later emigrated to the United States where they began a fabric store. Later there were several of them. They were known as Kay Fabric Centers.
An amazing statement came from her son, Ron Molnar: "She didn't hold a grudge - and she didn't hate.It hurt her when she lost the family, but she loved life."
I think this Holocaust survivor had an important lesson for us, even in her death.
