After a long struggle for over two years with a rare disease (fewer than 100 reported cases worldwide), longtime resident Branka Sondheim passed away on August 10 at UCLA Medical Center. She was 67. Born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia), on December 9, 1936, Branka survived the Holocaust with her mother in Vienna, by means of false papers after her father was taken to a concentration camp, where he died. After the war, her mother remarried, and in 1949 Branka came to Chicago with her brother and family. She attended Waller High School and won a scholarship to the University of Chicago, where she met her husband, Harry. They were married on March 30, 1958. Harry was an attorney in the California State Attorney General’s Office and later the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office while Branka finished her education at UCLA and graduated in 1959. She then began working as an Employment Security Officer for the state, helping the unemployed find jobs. After the Sondheims moved to the Palisades in 1960, she staffed the Youth Employment Service. Operating out of the Palisades-Malibu YMCA facility, she helped find jobs for Palisades youths until the operation was closed by the state. After the birth of her two children, Branka occasionally worked for the state on a part-time basis until her retirement in 1986. Harry retired from the L.A. District Attorney’s office after a 34-year career and began an active volunteer life, including serving as chairman of the Community Council from 2000-2002. Branka never really ‘retired,’ but devoted her life to things she loved: her family, friends and community activities. She was a volunteer in the Museum Service Council at the County Museum of Art, a member of the Palisades Garden Club and a persistent swimmer at the YMCA pool. In her ‘spare’ moments, she enjoyed cooking, traveling, participating in a knitting group and tending to her garden. She once wrote that ‘a garden, just like a marriage, is always a work in progress, constantly evolving, requiring tending and caring, with the hope that it will be improving all the time.’ In a writing class at Emeritus College in Santa Monica, Branka wrote many stories about her childhood years in Vienna during and after the war, following the example of her own mother Onkel Mayer, who had also participated in the class before her death. In the following story, Branka describes the days in 1944 during the bombing of Vienna. ‘I am transported back about 60 years to the many hours my mother Onkel, my soon-to-be-stepfather, and I spent in the cellar of 106 Gumpendorferstrasse in the 6th district of Vienna. We had no gas mask, no survival kit, nor did anyone in the building….What we and some of the other occupants of the apartment in the building might have taken along, depending on the time of year, were blankets, maybe a valise with one’s important papers, maybe jewelry or gold coins, which were always something you could trade in for food or favors from officials, should that ever become a necessity. ‘There were some benches or old crates in the cellar to sit on, and we brought a cot or two, for I remember sometimes lying down there, especially during the last few days of the war when the Russian army was marching in, when it wasn’t safe to be on the street or even near a window. ‘Even among all the destruction and fear one could always find a bright side. Towards the end of the war, when bombing attacks were more and more frequent, schools closed. I guess the idea was to allow children to stay close to home, to be with their parents. My mother was still going to the office downtown, however, and just took me with her. ‘In the office, I met some of my mom’s co-workers. …I especially liked Anny, a young woman of Czech background. She was always cheerful, talkative, lively and loved to cook and eat. When the air raid sirens announced another bombing attack, while we were in the office, everyone had to scramble down into the catacombs underneath and near the famous Vienna landmark, St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Nowadays, and I think before the war, visitors were led through these catacombs on tours of downtown Vienna. Queens and emperors and their families are buried there. The belief was that these underground caves were safe, that no bomb could penetrate these vaults. ‘It was in one of these cavernous rooms that my mother, Anny and others from the office were sitting and waiting for the all-clear signal again. Leave it to Anny! It was lunch time and she pulls out some pawidltatschkerln, a triangular pocket of dough filled with plum mousse, a typical Czech dish which not everyone can make to perfection. It may have rained bombs outside, but for a little while, I enjoyed this treat and forgot to be afraid.’ In addition to her husband, Branka is survived by her son Daniel and his wife Chalon Bridges and children Sam and Lucy in Sonoma; her daughter Rebecca Martin, who lives with her husband Robert and children Noah and Rachel in Pacific Palisades; and her brother Marcel Mayer (wife Vicki) of Waldorf, Maryland. The family will celebrate Branka’s life at a memorial close to her birthday in December at Kehillat Israel. For more details, contact Harry at 454-1088. The family suggests that any memorial contributions may be made to the Palisades Garden Club, P.O. Box 261, Pacific Palisades 90272 or the Palisades-Malibu YMCA Aquatic Program, 821 Via de la Paz.
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