She fled the Nazis. Escaped a Siberian prison camp. Survived hunger and homelessness in Central Asia. Battled malaria, dysentery and lice on deportation trains and overloaded ships. Landed, finally, in Middle East exile.
All by the age of 7.
Miriam Finder Tasini, now a spry 79-year-old retired UCLA professor and Bel-Air resident, endured a lifetime of hardships before most children enter second grade. It could have left her bitter and angry. Instead, she deals with the world, including what she sees as the latest injustice, with patience and serenity.
Tasini recently learned from a lawyer that her nearly quarter-century quest to recover her family's multimillion-dollar property in their native city of Krakow is being dropped from the Polish claims registry.