EAST HAMPTON, NY — Judith Sleed, almost 91 years old, has survived the unthinkable — the only member of her family left alive, at 12, after the Holocaust. She carried all the grief and memories in her heart for decades. Now, she’s facing the loss of her home of 20 years — and faced with eviction, she’s left searching for answers.
A GoFundMe page, “Judith Sleed, Rent & Groceries — Holocaust Survivor,” has been created by Stanislav Gomberg, an attorney who said he is working pro bono for Sleed in trying to keep her afloat and away from the currently looming eviction.
“Ms. Sleed is 90 years old and lives in East Hampton in a small subsidized apartment that she shares with her son,” he wrote. “During the past year, a significant portion of Ms. Sleed’s rental assistance was removed due to administrative mix-ups and banking mix-ups, thereby leaving her unable to afford her rent and now owing over $16,000 in back rent. As a result, her landlord currently attempting to evict her,” he said.
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The managers of the senior complex where Sleed lives, Windmill Village in East Hampton, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Gomberg said he created the GoFundMe to cover Sleed’s back rent, as well as pay for groceries and rent for the next few months, while her application to reinstate her rental subsidy agreement is pending. Any charitable funds obtained will be held in escrow and solely provided to Sleed at her request to cover rent and groceries, he said.
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Gomberg added:”It may be surprising for most to know that there are still many Holocaust survivors living in the world and the United States who have difficulty surviving month to month.”
Sleed is an accomplished children’s book author who also hosted a series of interviews with East End notables and others; those interviews can be found on YouTube. She also wrote a book, “Delibab-Utca,” about her experiences as an orphan in post-war Budapest as well as all that came after.
Sleed and her son Jeff spoke with Patch about the uncertainty that permeates their days.
Asked how she is feeling with all that’s looming ahead, Sleed said: “I’m terrible. I feel life is over.”
Sleed is no stranger to loss.
“I was 12 years old when I lost everything and everyone,” she said. The pain was so deeply etched that for years, she never spoke of the Holocaust, or of the family members that she had lost, with her own children.
Born in Budapest, Hungary, on April 30, 1932, Sleed said over a three-day period in October, 1944, her mother, father and brother Tomi — he was only 15-and-a-half, technically not old enough to go — were told they had to report to the station and board a train.
“My mother was very optimistic,” Sleed remembers. “She had no clue what was happening.”
Her mother was just 49 years old.
She never saw her family again.
The only way she knew that they had died, Sleed said, was that she received a postcard from them, which she still has, that she was later told those in death camps wrote to their families. “They required all the people they killed in the gas chambers to mail those postcards back home, to say they were okay,” she said. Her voice quiet, she added: “Nobody came back.”
Sleed was left behind on a street called Delibab, where a Zionist organization sheltered children, with the purpose of moving them to Israel; her cousin Ava organized her stay there. She was reunited years later with one of the girls she met there, Miriam — the two are still in touch.
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Her cousin Ava purchased false papers for her, Sleed said. “I always say she saved my life,” she said.
Eventually, Sleed was placed in a Red Cross building with a Swiss flag flying outside, “telling Nazis not to bomb that building. Somehow, the bombs didn’t find that building,” she said. “The last few months, we spent in the basement. That’s where I was when we were liberated.”
At 15, fell in love with a boy named George, just about two years older than she was. He was going to Brazil, where he had relatives, so Sleed decided to go to the United States, where she had family. Her father’s sister was in New York. “I said, ‘We’ll be neighbors,'” she laughed.
She waited in Rome in a displaced persons’ camp until her visa was in order and then, she boarded a ship. “It took seven days to cross the Atlantic,” she said.
She was just 15 years old.
When she got to the dock, her cousin Claire was waiting with her Uncle Julius. “She told me she was so scared — she spoke broken Hungarian — because she kept calling for me, but I wouldn’t get off the boat. I couldn’t find my luggage. She said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll buy everything for you. Leave it,'” Sleed said. “I wouldn’t leave it — all I had left was my letters and photographs.”
Sleed didn’t end up with George in the end; she met Joel Sleed at a party. “He was there with another girl and I took one look at him and I fell in love. He was in the Army and he was away for a whole year — and I waited for him to come back. He didn’t want to get married, but I did — so I won,” she laughed.
The two ultimately divorced but shared three children, Jodie, Jill and Jeff. Sadly, Jill died of cancer six years ago, another heavy cloud of grief that colors her memories.
Sleed has lived in her East Hampton apartment for 20 years and is devastated at the thought of having to leave. “I’m very, very upset about this situation,” she said.
As for Jeff, he is his mother’s primary caretaker. “I stopped by 12 years ago for a weekend and I haven’t left,” he said. He sleeps on the couch in the apartment, he said.
He had a career in sports broadcasting, he said, but now cares for his mother full-time. His ex-wife and children live in Texas.
He cares deeply about keeping his mother calm and optimistic, despite the challenges, he said.
“She’s the nicest person in the world,” he said. “She gets along with everyone. When you meet her, you’re amazed at how spry she is for her age —but there are certain things she can’t do, and I need to be here.”
Their current financial situation stems from the recertification process that his mother must undergo every year, Jeff said; a banking situation caused the snafu and led to the current potential eviction, he added.
Should that transpire, both agree that the results would be disastrous, especially in the Hamptons, where affordable rentals are all but non-existent after the pandemic.
“We would have no place to go,” Sleed said, her voice quiet.
His mother, Jeff said, has “survived all these years by being a worrier. I’m the glass-half-full kind of guy. I try to keep her spirits up, try not to let things scare her. I’m more concerned with her health.”
His mother has had several strokes and, despite her indomitable spirit, needs care.
The pair currently do not have a car and the cost of taxis is prohibitive, Sleed said.
Despite all they are facing, both clearly share a deep bond and pride in one another’s accomplishments; Jeff mentioned a documentary about his mother’s life that’s being produced.
“She’s amazing,” he said.
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