Lia Adrian Lustig Hans passed away Wednesday, September 22, 2021, the Autumnal Equinox, at the age of 93 at her home in Kensington, Great Neck, New York. A beloved wife, mother and grandmother, she is survived by her husband; Mortimer, her daughter Erica and granddaughters Samantha and Megan. She will be greatly missed by her family as well as by Erica’s husband, Gary and Samantha’s husband, Erik.
Lia Hans was born in Cluj, a city in Romania, which was Kolozsvar in Hungary before WWI. Her father was in the lumber business in a small way and after a few years the family moved to Szeged, a good sized city in Hungary where he managed a flour mill. Because they were Jewish, they could not become Hungarian citizens and consequently were deported. Lia was around six at the time and did not fully comprehend the precarious situation they were in. They waited for a couple of weeks in a border town, Arad, for the entry permit to Romania, as they would have been shot had they attempted to cross without the visa. On the last possible day, the conductor of the daily train got off, waving the papers above his head, so that they could see the reprieve.
They moved to a suburb of Bucarest where Lia started school without knowing a word of Romanian. After a short, tearful, adjustment she picked up the language very quickly.
Cousins of her mother’s lived next door to them. They had a little boy and a girl her age who was her daily playmate. The two families were very close. This family did not survive. The father and little boy were shot and the mother and daughter died of typhus in Auschwitz. Of the many friends and relatives, few survived, some escaping to Paris, others with various stratagems, but many more were killed or died because of unsurvivable conditions. Among them was Lia’s father’s older sister who had been like a third parent to her
Before WWII broke out, they immigrated to New York City where a large part of her mother’s family had been living since the 1920’s. Because her father’s birthplace had been incorporated into Czechoslovakia after WWI, they were included in that country’s quota for immigration to the US, which was fortunate as both the Hungarian and Romanian quotas were much smaller. As it was, they still had a long wait and her father made visits to the government offices and paid off whoever had to be bribed.
They arrived in New York on the SS Berengaria, docking on the west side of Manhattan. One of her uncles picked them up in his car. She realized afterwards that they must have been driving under the West Side Highway as the street was dark. She recalled seeing a dancing bear and for the first time in her life black people.
She was nine when they moved to New York City and was not concerned about learning English as she had her previous experience to give her confidence. She did try to use some German but her teacher either did not know it or would not admit to knowing it. She was started off in first grade, but as the language proficiency came, she was moved up from class to class every couple of weeks.
Eventually she graduated from Queens College as an Eng Lit major having first tried Chemistry. She was a member of the Sporcial Club, mostly skiers who already had learned to ski in Europe, a sport she greatly enjoyed. At Queens College she became a life-long bridge player, a crossword puzzle aficionado and a reader of Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope and British detective novels. She also enjoyed painting.
Her first job was at the New York Public Library on Fifth Ave. She was offered a position with an ocean going cargo carrier in the financial district, doing a wide variety of tasks including personnel hiring and eventually became the Corporate Secy.
After a break of a number of years, she returned to work in the employment field, a job that she gave up to care for Erica, the little girl that she and her husband adopted. They moved to Great Neck in 1967.
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