‘Blood ties are not always the most important’

Veronica Zundel shares the personal impact of her mother’s fostering and adoption story

In September 1914, at the start of the Great War, Cossacks invaded the town of Drohobych, an oil town that was then in Poland (it’s now in Ukraine – European borders have a way of shifting). They inevitably went for the Jews, of whom there were many; previously it had been a good place to be Jewish, with only occasional persecution, and the majority of the refineries were owned by Jews. Among those Jewish oilmen was my biological grandfather, Benzion Weber, with his wife Ottilie (known as Etie) Horoschowska. They managed to join a few hundred other Jews fleeing Drohobych towards Vienna – it was then all part of the same Austro-Hungarian empire. With them went their four surviving children (one had died in infancy), and, still in Etie’s womb, my mother.