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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/41526/full/41526/beloved-oakland-resident-and-auschwitz-survivor-dies/ <br /><br /> <b>Beloved Oakland resident and Auschwitz survivor dies</b> <br /> Thursday, March 4, 2010 | by stacey palevsky <br /><br /><p>No one entering Helen Taub’s Oakland condo ever left empty-handed.</p> <p>“She had a trademark challah–sponge cake combination,” said Rabbi Judah Dardik of Congregation Beth Jacob.</p> <p> <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 126px;"><img alt="Gobit taub, helen" class="left" height="158" src="http://www.jweekly.com/images/uploads/y_photos_2010/zp03_05_10/Gobit taub, helen.jpg" title="Helen Taub" width="126" /> <div class="caption">Helen Taub</div> </div> “She always had a challah and sponge cake ready for me. I’d say, ‘Helen, that’s so unnecessary. I’m here to visit you,’ and she’d say, ‘Yes, but still, take this, it’s a good sponge cake.’ ”</p> <p>Taub died Feb. 26 at Kaiser’s Oakland Medical Center after having an asthma attack, a condition she suffered from for many years. She was 85.</p> <p>In her freezer right now, Dardik said, there are labeled bags of challahs and marble sponge cakes that she intended to distribute at some point.</p> <p>“Helen had tremendous concern for the people she loved, and she worried about their welfare incessantly,” Dardik said. “She was coming from a place of love all the time.”</p> <p>Taub grew up in a Czech shtetl, the daughter of observant parents. Though they and most of her extended family died in Nazi gas chambers, she and her two sisters stuck together and survived Auschwitz.</p> <p>After a few years in a displaced persons camp in Cyprus, she moved to Israel, where she met her first husband, also a survivor. In 1953, she flew to Oakland to visit her brother and never left.</p> <p>Though she spoke no English, Taub found work in a toy factory. Divorced and raising her son alone, she saved every penny, and after remarrying she moved to an Oakland condo.</p> <p>Taub walked around Lake Merritt at least once every day, even into her late 70s. “When her asthma got worse, she’d walk up and down her hallway,” said granddaughter Kelly Ehrenfeld. “She was very fit and very active.”</p> <p>She also was a talented seamstress and made many of her own clothes and those of her granddaughters.</p> <p>“She was one of the most elegant, loving women I ever met,” said her friend Helaine Schweitzer. “When Helen walked into shul, all eyes turned to her, she was just so beautiful.”</p> <p>She and her late husband, Maurice, opened a key and lock shop on Park Boulevard. They were active members of Congregation Beth Jacob.</p> <p>“She was in synagogue just last week,” Dardik said March 1. “She was a regular shul-goer. She’ll be sorely missed. She had a tremendous presence. There’s going to be a void, something missing, without Helen around.”</p> <p>Taub is survived by her son, Morde Ehrenfeld, daughter-in-law Marianne Ehrenfeld and three granddaughters. A funeral was held March 2 at Congregation Beth Jacob in Oakland. Donations in Taub’s memory can be sent to Congregation Beth Jacob, 3778 Park Blvd., Oakland, CA 94610.</p>

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