"We were together, my mother, my aunt, my grandmother and another aunt, and I was holding my aunt’s little girl…She was only a year and a half, maybe two. The officer, with a whip on the side of the baby’s arm, pushed it so my aunt can pick up her child from me. He put me on the right and pushed them on the left, and that was the last time I saw them." - Stella Tarica 

Stella (Varon) Tarica was born on the Island of Rhodes to a Sephardic Jewish family on January 24, 1931. For 2,300 years Jews had lived on Rhodes and Stella's family had a long history on the island. Stella's family lived comfortably. Her father worked in a Jewish-owned department store, and Stella attended a Jewish school. During World War II, Rhodes was part of Italy. Jews there were relatively safe until the German Nazis occupied the island in 1943.

On July 23, 1944, the Nazis and their collaborators deported 1,700 Jews from Rhodes and Cos to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only 151 survived, including Stella and her three siblings. Upon arrival at Auschwitz, Stella recalls the painful separation of her family. She never saw her parents again. The Sephardic Jewish population in Auschwitz was small and the language barrier between them and the European Jews increased their isolation. Stella felt this isolation acutely when she became very ill but no one in her barrack spoke her languages of Spanish or Italian.

In 1945, the Nazis made an effort to empty the camp by moving all of the prisoners, including Stella, on foot westward to avoid the advancing Russian army. The prisoners were marched through harsh winter conditions for weeks. The majority died or were killed by the Nazis in what became know as the "death march." Still alive, Stella was liberated on the march by the Russian Army. Through the Red Cross she found her siblings and reconnected with an uncle who brought them to the United States in 1946. She settled in Seattle and married Morris Tarica in 1949, with whom she had two daughters.