Helene Elliott: Holocaust survivors' son, a pro hockey agent, tries to keep their memory alive
LOS ANGELES — Ron Salcer knew that his brilliant father had secured patents on 16 inventions that ranged from plastic table cloths to unbreakable roller hockey pucks, and he sensed that William Salcer's physical and mental strength had allowed him to survive the Holocaust and make a new life.
Ron knew his mother, Katarina, also from a small town in Czechoslovakia, was a Holocaust survivor, too. He was aware her family had been wiped out. "I never met a grandparent, never met an uncle, I never met a cousin," Ron said. "I had one aunt, my father's sister, who survived also."
But he didn't know about the horrors William endured at the infamous Mauthausen concentration camp, or that in a heart-stopping moment Nazis chose Katarina to work rather than be killed because she was young and strong.
