WILDER — At least once a week for around seven years, Betty Lauer would drop by the Upper Valley Jewish Center in Hanover.
There she’d find the organization’s office manager Chris DePierro, who would put his tasks aside and join Lauer for a walk around Occom Pond.
“It was a regular friendship, even though there was a big age difference,” DePierro said.
Lauer, a White River Junction resident who lived in the Upper Valley for around 25 years, died at age 101 on Monday, July 13.
On one of their early walks, Lauer prompted DiPierro to read her book “Hiding in Plain Sight,” which she published in 2004 about surviving the Holocaust. The title referred to how Lauer survived World War II in Poland, while so many others in her family — including her sister Eva — did not. While she was open about being a Holocaust survivor, she’d talk openly about her experiences only under certain circumstances.
“Anytime somebody would ask a question about (her survival), she would say, ‘Read my book and then we can talk,’” said Upper Valley Jewish Center Rabbi Mark Melamut.
Lauer was born in Germany March 1, 1925. She and her family were deported to Poland during the Holocaust and she survived by obtaining false papers that identified her as Polish and Catholic, according to a 2005 Valley News profile.
“One word,” she told the Valley News about her survival. “I was lucky.”
After the war, she and her mother traveled to New York, where they reunited with her father. She met her husband-to-be, Lawrence, and the two married in 1949, eventually settling in White Plains, N.Y. The couple had two sons and the family frequently visited Vermont, said Lauer’s youngest son, Allan. The couple liked skiing in the winter and horseback riding in the summer. After Lawrence retired from his career as a lawyer, the couple decided to make the move.
“They always wanted to live in Vermont,” Allan Lauer said. “That was a dream for them.”
The couple settled in Wilder around 25 years ago. Her husband died about five years after they made the move, but Lauer stayed.
“She loved the peace, the greenery; she loved the people. She loved the community. She had a great community of Vermonters who supported her,” Allan Lauer said. “She had great friends there who sort of looked after her without looking after her. They were there, but she was a very independent woman.”
Among those friends were Dartmouth College anthropology professor Sergei Kan and his wife, Alla.
“I was of course fascinated by her life story, survivor of the Holocaust, but also just her personality and her intellect and her view of the world,” Sergei Kan said. “I just saw rather that this was a very sophisticated, bright woman of diverse interests.”
Lauer was incredibly well-educated, having earned a master’s degree in comparative literature. The Kans, who immigrated to the United States from what was then the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s, had a lot in common with Lauer, despite their age difference: When the trio met, Lauer was in her 70s, while the couple was in their 40s. She affectionately referred to them as “my Russians,” Sergei Kan said.
“All three of us loved classical music, theater, classical 19th-century literature,” he said. Among her favorites was the German composer Richard Wagner.
Alla Kan and Lauer would frequently read and discuss works by German authors, including Stephan Zweig, Thomas Mann, Lyon Fuxtfanger and Erich Maria Remarque.
“Unlike many people who couldn’t stand German culture after Holocaust … she was able to separate the evil the Germans did from the culture and philosophy that they created,” Alla Kan said.
The two also attended Bible classes at the Upper Valley Jewish Center. Alla Kan described Lauer’s devotion as “tremendous” and her insights as “unique.”
Lauer had friends of all ages, from all walks of life. She often befriended the children of her adult friends, developing long-lasting relationships.
Though Lauer was part of the same generation as Alla Kan’s mother, it “somehow did not interfere with our confidences and talking about our personal lives, about our friends,” she said.
That was Melamut’s experience as well: Lauer didn’t just engage in small talk; she truly wanted to know how someone was doing. She attended service each Saturday and noted who was there and who was missing.
“She was just really happy to engage,” Melamut said. For instance, she would make sure he and his family were happy after moving to the Upper Valley from California. “She didn’t just talk about the weather: ‘Tell me about you, tell me about how you are?’”
During the days between services, when Lauer would stop by for her walks with DePierro, the two would catch up if Melamut was around.
“Whenever we would finish up … I would say ‘see you on Shabbat,” Melamut said. Her response, he recalled, was always “Where else would I be? This is my community.”
Lauer’s commitment to her faith, and her continued study of it, really struck Melamut.
“Somebody like her could have walked away from good, from her God and her faith. … Instead, she really dug in and she stayed with it,” Melamut said. “She was really steadfast in her commitment.”
While surviving the Holocaust was part of her life story, it wasn’t always at the forefront of her mind, Sergei Kan said.
“She didn’t live in that world of the past; she lived in the present,” he said. “It was there; it was part of her life and experience. It colored the way she looked at the world, but it did not oppress or dominate her mind or her spirit. She was an optimist.”
Another of Lauer’s commitments was to learning and growth. She attended a weekly German language group in Hanover, Allan Lauer said.
“She was very well read,” he said. “She read English and German magazines until she died.”
Lauer also frequently attended classes at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Dartmouth. The courses she took ranged from marine mammals to foreign policy to literature, program director Lisa King said.
“With everything in life that she’d been through … I think she was just so humbled and just a genuinely wonderful person who wanted to live life and do what she could do as long as she could do it and that she did it,” King said.
The two developed a friendship over the years and when Lauer was at Osher to take a class, she’d stop by King’s office to catch up. They’d share stories about their grandchildren (or, in Lauer’s case, grandchildren and great-grandchildren) and give each other hugs, making jokes about their height difference.
“If she knew you and liked you, every time you’d make eye contact with her, she’d smile and light up,” King said.
She also attended theater performances, concerts and lectures. She made a point of being out in the community, always staying engaged.
“Everyone said to get on her social calendar was a bit of a challenge because she was super busy,” Melamut said.
In February 2024, Lauer attended a talk given by Matan Boltax, who survived the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack at the Nova Music Festival in Israel. After Boltax spoke, people in the audience had a chance to ask questions. Lauer asked the first one.
“When will you dance again?” she asked Boltax, according to a Valley News story.
That interaction was typical for Lauer, who kept looking forward.
“I always said that she was my role model of how to age gracefully and positively and I still feel that way,” Sergei Kan said. “Despite her horrible experience, she loved life.”
