Anna KalmanCourtesy of family
Anna Kalman: Matriarch: Heartthrob. Holocaust survivor. Teacher. Born Aug. 30, 1919 in Beregszász, Czechoslovakia; died Sept. 21, 2023, in Montreal, of a stroke; aged 104.
“Just a few more good years, that’s all I ask,” Anna declared at her 80th birthday near the turn of the millennium. Twenty-four years later, she shrugged when questioned about the key to her longevity. “I like living,” she said.
It was a startling observation for someone whose life had not been easy. She was born the sixth of seven children in a Hungarian Jewish family of shopkeepers. One of her sisters was murdered in a crime of passion in the early 1940s; two others perished in 1944 in the Holocaust along with their parents; Anna and another sister endured Auschwitz, a series of slave-labour camps in Germany, death marches and death-defying perils.
Anna had a very strong sense of herself to the point of recklessness. At a Krupp munitions factory, an SS guard, suspecting her of sabotage, reached into her blouse. Affronted, she slapped his hand away, then froze, expecting to be shot on the spot. Instead, the guard ordered another young woman to search her. When the girl pulled out an onion, not a gun, the guard flushed and slunk away.
Beautiful, vivacious and fun, Anna attracted a host of admirers. Her love life was tempestuous. An eight-day marriage to her first husband in 1942 ended after he returned – as it were from the dead – from a Soviet prisoner of war camp in 1948: Anna was in a relationship and had a child. This was Anna’s future second husband, Gusztav Kalman, and their first daughter, Elaine. Judith, their second child, was born in Budapest in the days of Stalinist terror.
When the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 made escape from behind the Iron Curtain possible, Anna was the driving force behind their departure, first for London and then Montreal. Gusztav, aged 50 to her 37, shrank at the thought of starting a new life in a new language. Anna said she’d take the children whether he came or not.
Their marriage lasted 44 years during which Anna became the prime breadwinner. Gusztav, who could never remake himself into the agronomist he had been in Hungary, worked as a bookkeeper. Anna taught kindergarten with the same steely resolve she had shown in leaving Hungary. She had high expectations of her five-year-olds. They would not merely socialize and play. She taught them to read, print and the rudiments of arithmetic. Some Grade 1 teachers claimed Mrs. Kalman had left them nothing to teach.
Her expectations of her daughters were just as exacting. Wherever they went, they were to demonstrate that they’d been “well brought up.” As a mother she wasn’t warm or cuddly, but self-absorbed and sometimes volatile. Her love was always evident, though, in its fierce protectiveness.
Gusztav suffered a debilitating stroke in his mid-70s. Anna cared for him devotedly, at home and later at a geriatric facility, until his death in 1990. She met Max Dollin there. They were married for five years until Max died in 1997. She and Max played bridge and went ballroom dancing, the type of lighthearted pastimes she and Gusztav never shared.
Nobody, however, supplanted Gusztav in her heart and loyalty. Together they gave rise to a family of two daughters, four grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
“Who do I have?” Anna demanded to know when her daughters came to visit. Right up to the end they would count off the members of her family from eldest to youngest, listing their ages and occupations, spouses and partners. She needed to know that not one of them was alone in the world, and that neither was she. Despite her many losses, or maybe because of them, family was Anna’s bulwark and her highest achievement.
Elaine Kalman Naves and Judith Kalman are Anna Kalman’s daughters.
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