Fryma Zonabend (geb. Kesten)

Fryma Kesten was born in Wolbrom, in what is now Poland, as the illegitimate daughter of Chaim Maier Grossbach and Kiona Lea Kesten. The family was Jewish. Nothing has been preserved about her childhood and youth. After the defeat of Austria-Hungary, the destruction of the Dual Monarchy and the expulsion of the Habsburgs, she moves to Vienna with the master tailor Mendel Zonabend, who also comes from Wolbrom. Mendel Zonabend opened a tailor's shop at Baumgasse 52, in Vienna's 3rd district, in the same house where they lived together.

In 1927, she married Mendel Zonabend. The Zonabend couple did not become politically active. On March 12, 1938, the couple witnessed the demise of free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. With the occupation of Austria, German legislation was adopted and with it the 'Nuremberg Race Laws', according to which Fryma and Mendel Zonabend were considered 'full Jews'.

On 16 March 1938, Mendel Zonabend was murdered. On March 16, 1938, Mendel Zonabend was arrested by the Gestapo and deported on April 2, 1938 on the so-called 'Prominent Transport' to the Dachau concentration camp. From there, he was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp on September 23, 1938 and released from the camp on June 10, 1939. The Zonabend couple prepared their escape from occupied Austria.

On September 5, 1940 (the day they de-registered from their apartment in Vienna), the Zonabend couple fled to Palestine, which was under British mandate. They leave all their property behind. After entering Palestine illegally and now stateless, they are arrested by the British authorities and interned in Mauritius, which is also under British rule, on December 27, 1940.

In Mauritius, Fryma and Mendel Zonabend experience the liberation of Austria and the re-establishment of the Republic. With the capitulation of the Third Reich, they are released. However, they decided not to return to Austria and instead immigrated to the United States of America on August 11, 1945, settling in San Diego, California. Mendel Zonabend worked there again as a tailor. In July 1960, Fryma and Mendel Zonabend became US citizens.