Missing Pieces:
My Life as a Child Survivor of the Holocaust
By Olga Verrall
$24.95 sc
May 2007
ISBN 10: 1-55238-220-6
ISBN 13: 978-155238-220-2
200 pp.
5" x 7.5"
b/w Photographs
About the Book
Until age seven, Olga Barsony lived an idyllic life in
Szarvas, a small town in Hungary, surrounded by her doting, observant Jewish family. In spring 1944, Olga and
most of her family were interned in the Auspitz labour camp shortly after the Nazi occupation of Hungary.
Eventually reunited after the war, the family moved back to Szarvas, only to face harsh repression at the
hands of the Communists a few short years later. In 1957, the Barsonys immigrated to Winnipeg, where Olga met
and married her husband Orland Verrall, the cantor at the local synagogue. Olga and Orlandís love for each
other, the birth of their two daughters, and the promise of a peaceful, contented life together helped to
build the foundation of a new start in Canada - a seemingly happy ending to an otherwise traumatic number of
years.
Sadly for Olga Verral, she would have to endure many more tribulations as she undertook the painful process of
re-living the horror of the Holocaust as a child, while at the same time wrestling with the ghosts that had
been haunting her life ever since. Anger, sadness, and a deep sense of emptiness would be a recurring theme
and source of frustration as Olga undertook rebuilding her life in the aftermath of such intensely
excruciating events. After the death of her husband and subsequent emotional breakdown, doctors encouraged
her to write her memoirs as a form of therapy. In this way Olga Verral takes her first steps on the long
journey towards recovery and tries finally to write a genuinely triumphant ending to her life story.
Missing Pieces makes a significant contribution to the growing genre of writing by child survivors of the
Holocaust, and is the first Holocaust memoir to expose the little-known Auspitz labour camp.
About the Author
Olga Verrall was born in Svarvas, Hungary in 1936, and after surviving the Holocaust moved to Winnipeg
in 1957. She married in 1967, has two daughters, and currently lives in Toronto.
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