Vasile Goldner was born in 1913 to a Hungarian-Jewish family in Halmeu (then Austria-Hungary, today Romania). After graduation and law studies in Cluj, he worked for several years in a law office.
During the 2nd World War he was banned from exercising his profession and, with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht in 1944, was deported to the concentration camp of Auschwitz. There he survived as the only member of his entire family.
After the war Goldner married a holocaust survivor and started a family. In the following years he worked as secretary of the city council in Satu Mare, Transylvania. From 1953, he was appointed managing director of the local State Symphony Orchestra until his early retirement in 1966.
Due to the desperate economical situation in Romania and the worsening discrimination politics of the Ceauşescu regime, the Goldners emigrated to Israel in 1984. After his wife’s death in 1989, his daughter Lya, who had meanwhile settled in Germany, put him up in her home in Kirchzarten, where he lives to this day with her family in a „three-generation flat share“.
Mr Goldner had found his "adopted home" in Kirchzarten, which enabled him to live a modest but contemplative retirement with his family. He made his daily tours of the town on his own and helped his family with all kinds of shopping and "services". His favourite activity, besides crossword puzzles, was playing the violin. Playing the old Hungarian and Romanian folk tunes, he brought to life the sounds of his native country.
