Marika Roth (1) (1931–)

Marika Roth (later Marianne Klein) was born to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary. Her parents were Erzsebet and Joszef Roth, who gave their only child a comfortable life. Her mother died when Marika was 11 years old and she lived for a time in an orphanage. In March 1944, when Marika was 12, Nazi Germany invaded her country and forced all the Jews into ghettos. Her father was taken away by the Nazis one night with other men and boys, and she never saw him again. In December, she managed to escape the final roundup in her apartment building. In hiding, she heard the screams as thousands of Jews were shot on the banks of the Danube. She made her way to a deserted part of the city and moved to a different shelter each night until early 1945, when the Red Army liberated the city. After learning that her father had died in Bergen-Belsen, Marika emigrated first to Paris, then to Montreal, Canada. She married in 1948 and had two children. In 1953, having separated from her husband -- and now known as Marianne Klein -- she moved to Toronto with her children, supporting them by working as a waitress. She attended modeling school and in 1978, moved to Los Angeles, California. Over the years, she has worked as a dance instructor, a fashion model, a special-events coordinator, and as director of membership for the Chamber of Commerce.
She has taken creative writing classes and volunteered at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica. She also paints and exhibited her work at Santa Monica’s Edgemar Center for the Arts in 2013. Her memoir, All the Pretty Shoes, was published in 2011 under her birth name.