BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: Gemma La Guardia-Gluck was born in New York City. She was the daughter of an American Army band-leader and a European mother, of aristocratic - Italian-Jewish lineage. She was the sister of beloved New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia, and she became a Holocaust Survivor. Gemma's and Fiorello's father Achille was a native of Foggia, Italy, and their mother Irene Luzzatto-Coen was an Italian Jew from Trieste, a seaport of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which became part of Italy after World War I. They came to the United States in the early 1880s, where Fiorello, Gemma and their brother Richard were born. Achille became a U.S. Army bandmaster, but they returned to Trieste to run a hotel after Achille contracted hepatitis from spoiled Army rations during the Spanish-American War in 1898. After Achille's death in 1904, the family moved to Fiume where Fiorello was working for the U.S. consulate, but Fiorello moved back to the U.S. and became a translator at Ellis Island. Gemma La Guardia married Herman Gluck, a Hungarian Jew, and they settled in Budapest. Herman worked for the Budapest Central Bank, and together they raised two children. They lived in relative safety during World War II - until the spring of 1944 - when the German Army overthrew Hungary's wavering pro-Nazi government, and invaded and occupied the country. Deportation of Jews to concentration camps then began. The Glucks were taken to the Mauthausen concentration camp, but the Nazis knew Gemma was the sister of the mayor of New York City. They separated her from Herman, and took her to Ravensbruck, a forced-labor camp. Eventually she, her daughter Yolanda and infant grandchild Richard were taken to Berlin to be used in a prisoner exchange which never occurred. (Both Gemma's and Yolanda's husbands died in Mauthausen.) Gemma and her Hungarian Jewish husband has been living in Budapest in 1944 when Nazi troops stormed the city. The Gestapo arrested her as a political prisoner because she was La Guardia's sister. Gluck recounts the plight of Budapest's Jews, deportation to Mutthausen with her husband, and enslavement at Ravensbruck, a notorious concentration camp for women. With painful sensitivity she chronicles unspeakable evil, kindness at great risk, and courage among women in a prefeminist world. She also recalls her girlhood years spent in the Old West, Native Americans befriended by her mother, international travel with her father, and her brother's ambitions and rise to success. Her story, first published in 1961, has been out of print for decades. This revised edition contains a new prologue, epilogue, photos, and annotated material inspired by recently discovered notes and letters. Following her arrest and detention, her brother Fiorello Laguardia sent money to his sister, and worked to get Gemma and her family (first to Denmark), and eventually to New York City. Gemma had lost her U.S. citizenship when she married Herman Gluck, but after his death she regained it. Her daughter and grandson, however, were both Hungarian citizens and had to enter the U.S. as immigrants. Gemma used Fiorello's (by then), "famous" name to bring attention to her case, much to his consternation. Fiorello, who was then head of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, refused to ask for special favors (to bring Gemma and her family to the U.S.). He did, however, use his connections in the military (including, General Dwight Eisenhower), the U.S. State Department, and the American Red Cross to send them money, and oversee their welfare. The three were released in Berlin, just prior to its liberation by the Russians. In 1947, Fiorello successfully sponsored them through the very restrictive immigration process. Gemma, Yolanda and Richard arrived in New York City in May 1947, but Fiorello La Guardia soon died of cancer (in September of that year). Gemma and her family later moved into the Queensbridge Houses, built during her brother's years as mayor. She spent the rest of her life in "low-income", public housing (in Queens). Gluck died in 1962, about a year after her memoir was first published.
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See also "Find A Grave Memorial# 6288", [link]:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6288