Fallible protection Vera with her mother and father

Vera Seder (nee Gardos) was born in Budapest, Hungary on 7 November 1934 to Laszlo and Ilona. For the better part of the war, the Gardos family managed to live peaceably at 21 Szemere Street. However, a few months before her tenth birthday in 1944, Laszlo was arrested and sent to Taksony. He managed to send Vera a birthday card, which was the last time she ever heard from him.

Vera and Ilona moved into a house paid for by the Swedish Red Cross, but they were soon evicted and deported to the Jewish ghetto in Budapest. They tried to stay out of sight and quiet, often hiding in a bunker. On 21 December 1944, Ilona was arrested while trying to visit her parents. She was taken to the banks of the river Danube and shot.

Vera managed to find her way to her grandparents and her cousin Lorant, with whom she lived through to the end of the war and afterwards.

Infant Vera is pictured with her smiling parents. Her father Laszlo was a timber specialist who managed his own timber yard, while her mother Ilona worked in fashion. Together they provided Vera with a degree of comfort and stability unknown to many in the 1930s in Hungary.