Lilly (Lebovics) Segelstein, 98, died peacefully at her home in the Rhoda Goldman Plaza in San Francisco, California, on Feb. 19. Graveside services were held on March 1 at Mt. Carmel Cemetery.
Lilly was born on Jan 5, 1928, in Klyucharki, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine), and moved to Munkács at the age of 10. She always considered Munkács to be her hometown. She remembered her childhood there fondly, especially the fruit trees and vegetables of her grandparents’ garden.
This peaceful childhood was tragically changed by the Nazi invasion on March 20, 1944. Lilly and her family were first interned in a ghetto, and then sent to Auschwitz. After spending several months there, she and her dear sister Leah (of blessed memory) were shipped to a labor camp in Reichenbach, Germany, where they worked in a munitions factory.
After being liberated on May 8, 1945, Lilly and her sister made their way to a displaced persons (DP) camp in Admont, Austria. Leah went to Palestine and Lilly went through a series of DP camps in Italy where she met her future husband, Boris Segelstein (of blessed memory). When the Segelstein family learned of their survival, they sponsored Lilly and Boris to come to the United States in 1948, where they started a new life in New York and had their first child, David Jay, in 1949.
In 1954, they moved to Kansas City, where Boris worked as a clothing designer and pattern maker. Cookie was born in 1958, and Cindy in 1959. In Kansas City they found a community of other Holocaust survivors who became their extended family. They became very active in the New American Club, started by Kansas City survivors in the late 1950s. The club played a key role in the local Jewish community’s efforts to remember the Holocaust. Both Lilly and Boris testified for the USC Shoah Foundation in the mid-1990s. Lilly and a partner opened E&L Alterations in the 1970s, which was in operation for more than 25 years.
After Boris’ death in 2000, Lilly became involved with the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and visited schools as an educator. She moved to Florida in 2008, then moved to San Francisco in 2022.
Lilly was always full of a fierce zest for life, her family and friends, and she enjoyed reading, walking and travelling. She took great joy in spending time with her grandchildren, Emily, Zachary, Isaac and Jonah, and was blessed to meet her great-grandchildren, Oliver and Quinn.
Lilly was preceded in death by her husband, Boris (2000), and son, David (2021), both of blessed memory. She is survived by her daughters, Cookie Segelstein (Peter Harrow) and Cindy Foss; grandchildren, Emily Lubanko, Zachary Feldman (Sarah), Isaac Lubanko and Jonah Segelstein (Michaela); and great-grandsons Oliver and Quinn Segelstein.
Online condolences for the family may be left at louismemorialchapel.com.