She sounds like an amazing woman - the furniture store in my home town was owned by a survivor of the concentration camps, not sure which one (didn’t ask) but he had the numbers tattooed on his arm. He had three sons and when each of them graduated college he set them up with stores of their own. His name was Jack and he remembered every customer, great guy who had truly been through hell.
I think one reason that my friend’s apartment was so beautiful, is because she and her husband also had friends in the furniture/antique business. There was a wonderful Sleigh bed in her apartment that must have been almost 200 years old.
She had a leaded-glass Moravian Star, that she gave me. My husband and I made it into a hanging lamp that always decorates our Christmas, in her memory.
-JT