Whether studying algae at the New York Aquarium or creating underwater-life exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History, Eva Konrad Hawkins found a refuge in New York City as a marine scientist.
A Jew who grew up in Hungary, Dr. Konrad Hawkins had lived through the Holocaust and the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and then fled Communist oppression for the United States. There she also conducted research and taught biology at the University of Pennsylvania, Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey and City College in Harlem.
She died of Covid-19 on April 18 at a nursing home in the Bronx, family members said. She was 90.

Eva Konrad was born March 12, 1930, to a prosperous family near Debrecen in eastern Hungary. She was 14 when the Germans invaded.
While most Jews in their village were killed in Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps, she and George, who was 10, and two of their cousins managed to escape to a safe house in Budapest, thanks to a gentile shopkeeper who used documents obtained through bribes, a cousin, Paul Zador, said in an interview.

Young Eva had to wear a yellow Star of David when walking outside or risk being shot. At one point, she narrowly escaped a roundup and deportation to a camp.

As posted in the New York Times – Those We’ve Lost