Michèle Blask, known as Micky, is the daughter of two Holocaust survivors who grew up in the survivor community of Montreal, Canada. Her father, Hans Nemenoff, grew up in Königsberg, Germany. He and his immediate family survived the war by escaping to British Mandate Palestine.
Hans was the last to leave in August of 1935, and spent the war years in Tel Aviv. Micky’s mother, Imy Rothmüller, grew up in Temesvar/Timișoara în Transylvania, now Romania. Imy married her first husband, Istvan Halmos, and moved with him to Cluj, now Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
From there, Imy and her husband were deported to Auschwitz in May of 1944. Imy was transferred to Pettighoffen /Lenzing, a subcamp of the Austrian concentration camp Mauthausen where she was liberated on May 5, 1945 by US military troops. She survived, but her husband was murdered.
