Liana Ornstein

Born:
Brno, Czechoslovakia
April 21, 1928

Liana Ornstein's father was the director of a textile mill in Brno, Czechoslovakia. In early 1939, Liana’s father and her brother moved to Lithuania for work while Ornstein and her mother stayed in Brno. On March 17, ten-year-old Liana watched from her window as German tanks rolled into the city. Shortly afterward Ornstein and her mother joined the rest of the family in Lithuania. Holocaust Rescuer Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese Consul, gave the family visas that allowed them to leave the country. The Ornsteins fled in March 1941, taking a ten-day journey by train through Russian Siberia before reaching Japan. After about eight months they relocated to Shanghai, China, joining a community of about 17,000 Jews who found refuge there during World War II. At the end of the war in 1945, Liana and her family moved to Argentina where her father was able to find work by pretending he was Catholic. In 1949, Ornstein moved to the U.S. where she worked as a secretary at a movie studio in California. She later moved to New York and worked in the hotel industry, eventually being transferred to Mexico before arriving in Houston.

Parents:
Ernst Ornstein, survived
Edith Wagner Ornstein, survived

Siblings:
Peter Ornstein, survived