Renate Krakauer

Renate Krakauer, née Tannenzapf, was born to a Jewish family in the small city of Stanislawów, Poland, during the Soviet occupation at the start of World War II. After the Nazis took control of the region, the family managed to escape the massacres of Jews in Stanislawów and confinement in the ghetto. For her protection, Renate's parents Charlotte and William Tannenzapf entrusted her as a tiny child to a Polish Christian woman of their acquaintance who lived in a distant village. Her parents hid separately, first in a nearby village, then in the woods, constantly in danger of discovery and death. All three survived, and after the war they were reunited. They fled continuing anti-Semitism in Poland to a displaced persons camp in Eggenfelden, Germany. In 1948, they emigrated to Canada, settling first in Montreal and then in Hamilton for William's work as an electrical engineer. Renate followed in her mother's footsteps and earned a pharmacy degree from the University of Toronto; then an M.A. in environmental studies from York University; later she obtained a Ph.D. degree in education. She married and had three children. After retiring from careers as a pharmacist, educator, and senior manager in government, she became a writer, publishing a novel called Only By Blood (2015), a play, and numerous short stories and essays. Her short memoir But I Had a Happy Childhood was published in 2009 in the same volume with her father's Memories from the Abyss, as part of The Azrieli Foundation Series of Holocaust Survivor Memoirs. The French edition of the book was entitled Souvenirs de l'abime/Le Bonheur de l'innocence.