Rectangular yellow badge with Star of David and Ž kept by hidden child

Theodora (Dorica) Rahela Basch was born on January 31, 1938, in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (Croatia), to Salamon and Silva Deutsch Klayman. Her father was a descendant of a family of cantors in Bosnia. He owned a brush making workshop. Her mother, Silva, a teacher, was born to Josef Leopold and Katarina Deutsch and raised in Ludbreg in northwest Croatia, where her father served as the community rabbi for more than 40 years. Silva had two older sisters, Blanka and Gisela (Giza), an older brother Erne. Blanka married Rudi Apler, and had two daughters, Zdenka and Vera. Giza, in 1939, married Ljudevit Vrancic, a Catholic and the unofficial mayor of Ludbreg. Dorica's younger brother Zdravko was born on January 21, 1941.

In April 1941, Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia and the country was partitioned. Croatia became an independent state under the rule of the pro-Nazi fascist Ustasa party. Dorica was on an extended visit with her maternal grandparents in Ludbreg at the time. Her parents and infant brother were arrested in June. Their housekeeper visited them in jail and was permitted to take the baby Zdravko. Silva’s family took him to Ludbreg. Salamon was deported to Jasenovac concentration camp and Silva to Stara Gradiska, a subcamp of Jasenovac. For a while, Dorica and Zdravko lived with their grandparents. The Ustasa was determined to cleanse the country of Serbs and Jews. In order to avoid arrest, Dorica and Zdravko were frequently taken by train, often with little warning, to a nearby town. Different neighbors, such as the Runjaks, helped care for and hide the children. The children had to stay indoors, often in hiding in the cellar. There were frequent battles between the Ustasa regime and partisans in the area and bullets would shatter the windows of their home. Their aunt Blanka and her family escaped to the south. This region was controlled by Italy which did not deliver the Jewish residents to Germany for disposal in concentration camps. Blanka and family returned after a decree was issued stating that Jewish refugees could safely return to Croatia. The Ustasa and German forces controlling the countryside ignored the decree and, by 1942, nearly the entire Jewish community of Ludbreg had been deported, including their grandparents and Blanka and her family. Dorica and Zdravko were left behind with their maternal aunt Giza and her husband Ljudevit.

In 1943, Ljudevit was arrested on suspicion of supporting the partisan resistance. He was sent to Jasenovac, where he saw Salamon, who was still alive despite having little food and being forced to perform heavy labor. Ljudevit was eventually released with other political prisoners. Later that year, after his release, Giza was denounced as a Jew, arrested, and deported. Ljudevit travelled to several cities searching for Giza and seeking her release. Dorica and Zdravko hid with their neighbors, the Runjaks, and pretended to be their children. Most people in Ludbreg knew the children were Jewish, but they were not denounced. Ljudevit soon returned, having lost track of Giza. He later learned that she had been taken to Auschwitz concentration camp where she died from an intestinal illness soon after her arrival.

German troops left the region in April 1945 and the war ended in May. After liberation, Ljudevit learned the fate of the children’s family members. Salamon had escaped from Jasenovac with a group of Jewish prisoners and was shot by a patrol in 1944. Silva died from overwork in Stada Gradiska. Their maternal grandparents and Blanka and her family were murdered in Auschwitz. Only four member of Dorica’s extended family survived. Her maternal uncle Erne and three of her father’s siblings: Bernard, who survived a prisoner of war camp, Josef, who has escaped to Budapest, Hungary, and her aunt Lina who, with her children Rubin and Dina, hid in the mountains with Yugoslav partisans.

Ljudevit legally adopted Dorica and Zdravko. In 1946, Zdravko, age 5, died of scarlet fever. He was nursed during his illness by Maria Runjak, the neighbor who had hidden him during the war. Dorica attended high school in Varazdin, and then the University of Zagreb. In 1957, she was invited to live in Switzerland with her paternal uncle, Josef Basch, and his family so that she could study at the University of Lausanne. On her way to Switzerland, Dorica met Daniel Klayman, a Jewish American research chemist who was en route to his native New York after a year as a postdoctoral Fulbright scholar in India. They corresponded for a year, then Daniel returned to Switzerland and the two married in the fall of 1958. Later, they settled in the Washington DC area and had two children. Theodora earned college degrees in French and teaching English as a second language and became a teacher. She is also a longtime volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Ljudevit passed away in 1990.