Frances Fabri, born Sárika Ladányi (22 September 1929 – 9 January 2006), was a Hungarian-born author and

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

survivor. She was born in

Békés Békés (; ro, Bichiş; sk, Békéš) is a town in Békés County, Hungary. It lies about north of Békéscsaba and east of Budapest. History The area of the present town has been inhabited since ancient times, due to its good soil and pr ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

Life

At the age of fourteen she was deported to

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

with her family. Only Fabri and her mother survived. After their liberation they returned to their hometown. They left in 1956, and moved to

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

, where Fabri graduated from

Hofstra University Hofstra University is a private university in Hempstead, New York. It is Long Island's largest private university. Hofstra originated in 1935 as an extension of New York University (NYU) under the name Nassau College – Hofstra Memorial of Ne ...

in history and literature. She married Emery Fabri in Hungary, but the couple later divorced. She moved to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

in about 1972. With the help of college students she started interviewing Holocaust survivors, which she collected in a book called ''Crickets Would Sing''. After her death in January 2006 in

, Dr. Matthew McKay established the ''Fabri Literary Prize'' in her honor.

Sources

The Fabri Literary Prize
*
New Harbinger Publications: Frances Fabri
Hofstra University alumni Hungarian emigrants to the United States 1929 births 2006 deaths 20th-century Hungarian writers {{Hungary-bio-stub