She is also well known at the campus of the College of William & Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia.

She lectured in the class of Professor Henry Hart on the history of the Second World War, gave a talk to a packed house at the Reves Center for International Studies on how she survived the Holocaust as a child, in Hungary, and gave a presentation at William & Mary’s Muscarelle Museum of Art, on “How to Photograph the National Geographic Way.” According to her recently published novel, based on her life, Erika Fabian is a Hungarian-born author, photographer, playwright, director, and Holocaust survivor whose life and work chronicle a journey of resistance, creativity and testimony.

She was born in Budapest. She survived the Holocaust only because her mother was able to secure false Christian identity papers, and they went into hiding.

Her father died in a Nazi concentration camp. After the war, Erika, her mother, Piry, and sister Judith, lived in Communist Hungary. In 1953, they made an attempt to escape communist oppression by crossing the border between communist Czechoslovakia and Austria. However, they were apprehended by the Slovak border police and imprisoned.

They were returned to communist Hungary a year later. In October 1956, during the anti-Soviet revolution, the Fabians made another attempt to escape. This time they succeeded and managed to emigrate to the United States.

Here, Erika earned a master of fine arts degree and went on to build a prolific career as an author, playwright, director and speaker.

Her more than 26 published works, including the autobiography “Liars’ Paradise,” document her family’s survival under two totalitarian regimes and her journey toward artistic expression and testimony.

I have asked Erika, what made her decide to write a memoir at this stage of her life?

“My older son, Don, a Lasik eye surgeon with his own clinic in London, England, who has three children, asked me to write my family story so his children would know their background on my side of the family,” Erika said.

For Erika growing up in Hungary, it was an integral part of the drama of the 20thh century.

I was curious to know how she went about illustrating it in her book.

“I interweaved historical and political events into the story as it affected my family’s and friends’ daily lives,” she said.

Erika explained, she did a lot of research to make sure the historical events and dates were all accurate. Thus, instead of writing a simple family history, she ended up writing a historical novel with her family members and herself as key figures in it.

To bring to life those extraordinary experiences, Erika wrote the story in the third person narrative format. It gave her the freedom to write people’s thoughts and feeling without to say “he said” or “she said.”

Thus, even though all events and conversations are recalled from her own past, Erika emphasized, the story reads like a novel.

I asked her what stands out in her mind.

“The nearly a year I spent as a child prisoner in Bratislava, then temporarily released from prison, as a free person, in Prague,” Erika recalled. “My life in a foreign country opened my eyes to a different culture, different languages, and different traditions. It taught me that the world was full of interesting places. As an adult I chose a career that allowed me to travel the world and enjoy its difference.

Asked, what lessons she has learned that she would like her grandkids and her readers should remember, Erika said: “To accept others without judgment. To do as much good for others as possible, and above all, follow my heart when it came to choosing my profession so I could live a happy productive life.”

(Frank Shatz is a former resident of Lake Placid and a current resident of Williamsburg, Virginia. He is the author of “Reports from a Distant Place,” a compilation of his columns. This column is used with permission by the Virginia Gazette.)