Maybe she was born with it. Maybe it came after her internment in 11 different Nazi camps. But somehow, Czech-born Agnes Heyman emerged from the Holocaust with, as her son put it, “an advanced sense of freedom.”
Heyman seized upon her newfound freedom in America to marry, raise a family, aid the Jewish community and climb high in San Francisco city government.
Agnes Heyman died of natural causes Sept. 30. She was 85.
A lifetime member of Hadassah, and a devoted congregant at San Francisco’s Congregation Beth Israel-Judea, Heyman lived a full life as a wife, mother, city official and member of the Jewish community.
“She was a hard worker,” said her son, John Heyman, a resident of Berlin, Germany. “Both my parents felt they needed to regain the status they had before World War II as wealthy, educated Jewish people. They never stopped reading, they never stopped praying, and they were always informed.”
Heyman was a longtime controller for the city of San Francisco, overseeing the welfare department for much of that time. During her tenure, every welfare check going out to recipients had her signature on it.
She loved her adopted city by the Bay, and even served as a tour guide for the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum. No doubt her appreciation for San Francisco tasted all the sweeter considering where she had come from.
Agnes Heyman was born Agikam Friedman in Ungwar, Czechoslo-vakia, in 1923, and was was raised in a religious home (her grandfather was a rabbi). The Nazi invasion came relatively late to her eastern town near the Ukrainian border, but eventually, when she was 16, the family was deported to Auschwitz.
Most of her family perished, though she, along with two cousins, survived imprisonment in a string of work camps.
After the war, she lived in displaced persons camps for a time. A uncle living in New York returned to Europe to find her and other relatives. He sponsored the immigration of all three cousins, who relocated to New York.
Not long after, she met Alfred Heyman, a Berlin-born Jew who also had endured Nazi work camps during the Holocaust. The two married, and in 1947, their son, John, was born.
Alfred Heyman worked in fashion design, and when he had the chance to move west in 1952, he took it. The family settled in San Francisco, where Alfred worked for designer David Gaines. He later opened his own factory.
In 1957 Agnes Heyman took a job at Macy’s. Her head for figures soon led to her working for the city, where she stayed for 30 years.
John Heyman remembers his mother’s respectful approach to childrearing. “She knew what I was supposed to do, but she always left an opening for me to make the decision,” he said. “So she would say, ‘You need a Jewish education. Do you just want Sunday school or learn Hebrew or stay on to confirmation?’ It was always my choice. She wanted me to grow up independently.”
John went on to become an optometrist and professor of optometry. He married a German woman and now lives in Berlin, as do his grown daughter and grandson. It is not lost on him that he has returned to the city of his father’s youth to live a Jewish life.
After the death of her husband in 1969, Heyman moved to the Sequoias retirement community in San Francisco. She remained engaged with family, the Jewish community, culture and civic affairs throughout her life, and even exercised daily until the end.
“She had a lot of backbone,” John Heyman says of his mother. “That’s the only reason she survived.”
Agnes Heyman is survived by her son, John M. Heyman of Berlin, granddaughter Rhea Heyman of Berlin, and a great-grandson. Donations may be sent to the Jewish National Fund, 78 Randall Ave., Rockville Centre, NY 11570.