Felicia Carmelly

Felicia Carmelly (1931–2018) was a courageous Holocaust survivor, clinical psychotherapist, educator, and author who dedicated her life to breaking the historical silence surrounding the Transnistria concentration camps. Born in Vatra Dornei, Romania, she was just ten years old when she and her family were brutally deported to the disease-ridden Transnistria camps during World War II, a horrific ordeal she survived before later emigrating to Israel and eventually establishing her home in Toronto, Canada. After building a successful career as a psychotherapist and lecturer, Carmelly focused her trauma-informed expertise on historical preservation, founding the Transnistria Survivors’ Association of Toronto to advocate for forgotten victims. As an author, she published the landmark 1997 educational anthology Shattered! 50 Years of Silence: History and Voices of the Tragedy in Transnistria, and later penned her deeply moving 2015 personal memoir, Across the Rivers of Memory, ensuring that the systemic atrocities committed against Romanian Jews would never be erased from global history.