A Tale of Two Survivors
Steve Floris


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Steve Floris

Hungarian-born Steve Floris was twenty years old at the outbreak of WW II when Hungary joined the Axis Powers in declaring war on the western Allies and the Soviet Union.
Fortunate to survive the Holocaust, Floris made his way home to Budapest after the war to marry his sweetheart, Eva. Together they escaped Soviet-occupied Hungary and spent three years in various DP (displaced persons) camps in Austria before managing to emigrate to Canada.
Steve and Eva settled in Vancouver in 1949 and, two years later, obtained a lease from the Vancouver Park Board to operate the Art Gallery Tea Room in Stanley Park. They renamed this quaint, rustic building the Ferguson Point Tea House.
They sold the business in 1964 and, both at the age of forty-five, went into real estate. Steve retired in 1989 and took a computer course for seniors at the University of British Columbia. Using his newly acquired word-processing skills, he wrote his first article which was published in the Vancouver Sun in 1993.
Steve began writing his war-time and DP-refugee memoirs in 1997 and, in 2002 at the age of 81, realized the publication of Escape from Pannonia.*
* Pannonia was the name the Romans gave to their northern province. It was subsequently occupied by the Huns, Avars, and Tartars before being occupied by the Magyars at the end of the 9th century when it was renamed Hungary.




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