Diana Galante Golden was born into a large Sephardic Jewish family in Rhodes, a region where 10,000 Sephardic Jews dwelled. In June 1944, the German occupation led to her family’s deportation, first to a detention camp in Piraeus and then to Auschwitz, where Diana’s father died during transport. Once at Auschwitz, Diana was separated from her mother, aunt, and younger brother, all of whom were killed. She and her two sisters endured the brutal conditions of the camp and were later transferred to a labor camp in southern Germany, where they worked in a machine gun factory until they were liberated by the Red Army. Diana emigrated to the United States in 1948, eventually settling in Portland, Oregon.
