Mia Truskier: The “Oldest Refugee”

This book is an oral testimony of the life of a remarkable woman, Mia Truskier, who witnessed and participated in some of the most tragic and extraordinary events of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Born in 1920 in Warsaw, Poland to a prosperous, secular Jewish family, she was in a social class of Jews who prided themselves on contributing to the Polish nation and assumed that they were of such value because of their education, wealth, and skills that they would be able to escape the effects of anti-Semitism. They were wrong.Mia fled Poland in April 1940 for Italy where she lived out World War II passing as Christian. She came to the United States in 1949, settling eventually in California. The memory of being denied a visa as a refugee and forced to live illegally in Italy, fueled her determination to assist all refugees. She was until her death in February 2014 a political activist and member of the Board of Trustees of the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant (EBSC) in Berkeley. Often referred to as EBSC’s “oldest refugee,” Mia worked to assist people from Central America and Haiti fleeing from war, violence, and hardship.