Biography
Genya Markon (the donor) is the granddaughter of Abram and Genya (Settel) Magid of Vilna. The Magids had two daughters, Raya and Katia. Raya Magid met Alexander Markon, a Jewish émigré living in France, while he was visiting his family in Vilna. When Alexander returned to France, he and Raya carried on a courtship by mail, and the two were married in Paris on February 11, 1937. In 1939, Alexander, who had served in the French army in 1927-1928, was recalled to the military. Following his demobilization in the summer of 1940, he joined Raya, who had fled to Toulouse. While waiting for permission to immigrate to the United States, she gave birth to their first child, Alain, on June 13, 1941. In 1942 their visas arrived and they booked passage to the U.S. aboard the Portuguese liner Carvalho Araujo. The ship left Lisbon in late October, arriving in Baltimore on November 2, 1942. Genya Magid died a natural death in Vilna in 1939. With the German invasion of 1941 Abram and Katia were forced into the Vilna ghetto. Abram was killed that same year during an action in Ponary. Katia survived the concentration camps of Kaiserwald and Stutthof.
