Lucy Mandelstam was born Lucie Drachsler in Vienna, Austria on June 24, 1926. The Memoir—featured on this website—spans her childhood in Vienna, her life under the Nazi Regime in Vienna and in the Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Stutthof concentration camps; her long journey to Israel via Italy and Cyprus, and her life in Israel since 1948. Additional stories look back at past memories as well as at recent events, people, and places in her life.

Lucy started writing when her ailing husband Charles received a computer from friends who thought it would enable him to keep abreast of events in his beloved world of golf. Although Charles never ventured beyond Solitaire, Lucy was the one who started dabbling with the new toy and soon decided to take advantage of it and write her life story. Family and friends were thrilled with the resulting Memoir and begged her to continue writing. Encouraged, she went on to produce the collection of life stories and vignettes presented on this website.

In 1997, a year after she and Charles moved to the Israeli coastal town of Netanya, Charles died following a long illness. In 2007, tragedy struck again when her son Gillie died a month short of his 47th birthday. Despite the many losses, Lucy's optimistic spirit persevered and she continued to enjoy her life and her close relationships with her loving family and friends in Israel and abroad.

On April 23, 2020, Lucy passed away in her home in Tiberias, Israel.

Lucy's daughters Yael Mandelstam and Irit Lerner wish to extend their warmest thanks to Lucy Gertner, who painstakingly edited the Memoir; to Yael Dresdner, who designed this beautiful website; and to Larry Larson, who heroically rewrote the code for the entire site to make it responsive to current technologies.