If you want to live you have to go
Stáhnout obrázek
Margalit (birth name Margit) Sonnenfeld was born on 26 November 1925 to a Jewish family in Brno. She had a twin sister Ruth and an older sister Lotte. Her farther Karel Sonnenfeld was a barrister, a representative of the Jewish community in Brno and a delegate to the Jewish National Council in Moravia. Margalit‘s father was also an active athlete. He was one of the founders of the sports club Maccabi; between 1927 and 1928 he presided over the Maccabi World Union. Margalit became an active swimmer at the age of five and was a member of the sports club Bar Kochba in Brno. Following the 15 March 1939 occupation, Margalit‘s father was arrested and detained for ten days. He did not want to leave the country himself but tried to send abroad his daughters. Thanks to the Maccabi sports club, Margalit received a permission to leave for Palestine, where she joined her twin sister Ruth in March 1940. In Palestine, she lived in a boarding house and later moved to a Kibbutz. Her parents and older sister Lotte were deported to Terezín in 1942. Her mother and sister lived to see liberation but her father died in Auschwitz in October 1944. In 1946 her mother committed suicide. Lotte left for Israel in 1949 as well. In 1958 Margalit moved to Tel Aviv and studied to become a teacher. She worked as a PE teacher and later also gave lectures to future teachers. At the same time she did swimming therapy for children and adults suffering from palsy. She trained swimmers with disabilities and accompanied them to the Paralympics from 1964 till 1992. She lives in Tel Aviv.
