Chava (Eva) Shik

Chava (Eva) Shik and her twin sister Miriam were born in Novi Sad, Serbia in 1939 to Dr. George and Vera Tibor. In 1942, Chava and her sister were taken to the edge of the Danube, where a mass murder of over a 1,000 Jews and Serbs was perpetrated by members of the Hungarian Gendarmes, yet both sisters managed to survive. Afterwards, the day before the deporation of the Jews of Novi Sad to Auschwitz, an Austrian officer by the name of Roman Erich Petsche took the two girls to Budapest and from there arranged shelter for them in a monastery in Pecs. The head of the monastery, Sister Renata sheltered Chava and her sister along with two other Jewish children. Both Sister Renata and Rosenspitz were later recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. After the war, having lost their family, the girls were adopted by their mother's cousin and in 1948 immigrated to Israel where they grew up on Kibbutz Ein HaHoresh. Following her army service, Chava moved to Lehavot-Haviva, a kibbutz founded by Holocaust survivors from Auschwitz, and married Zeev Shik, who had lost his entire family there, and with whom she has two children and three grandchildren.