DORA WULC

Dora Kaplan Wulc passed away peacefully on May 4, 2019 at the age of 94. She was preceded in passing by her beloved Husband Stanley. She is survived by her sister, Zahava Gutman (the late Nathan), her children, Allan (Carol), Robert (Felice), and Karen (Mark McKinney), her grandchildren, Daniel Wulc (Lauren), Andrew Wulc, Isabella McKinney, and Jackson McKinney, and a great granddaughter, Emilia Wulc.

Graveside Services will be held at Shalom Memorial Park, 101 Byberry Road, Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006 at 12 noon on May 8, 2019. Shiva will be observed at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Allan Wulc on Wednesday, May 8, starting at 7 PM. In lieu of flowers, contributions in her memory may be made to Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, https://www.philaholocaustmemorial.org/ or the Alzheimer's Association, https://www.alz.org/ .

Born in the village of Stolpce, November 17, 1924, now Belarus-and, at the time Poland-- Dora had just graduated High School when Hitler's army invaded Poland. She survived the Holocaust-first by working in a Soap Factory, then by hiding, with her sisters, in a cellar under a stall concealed by straw in a local farmer's barn. The rest of her family, a sister, a brother, and her parents-all perished.
After the war, Dora had the choice to join relatives in South Africa, Seattle, or to emigrate to Palestine. She and her sisters were interred in Cyprus waiting for passage into what was then Palestine. While the sisters did emigrate and eventually became Israeli citizens, Dora decided instead to pursue University studies in Chemistry in Torino, Italy and began University there. Through her friend from Stolpce, William Good, she found this possibility--along with living quarters --at the Casa dell Studente, a magical incredible 19th century private home that had been converted postwar into a dormitory for Jewish students. There, she met Stanley Wulc, an engineering student, a Holocaust survivor and former a partisan who was to become the love of her life.
Stanley came to the U.S. on a B'nai B'rith Scholarship to Virginia Tech and proposed to Dora over intercontinental telephone. She accepted and was granted a partial scholarship to come to the United States. There she obtained a Bachelor's degree and Master's degree with highest honors. Neither one of them spoke a word of English when they got here.
She began working at Merck in Rahway after college. She was the first female assistant editor of the Merck Index. She and Stanley lived in Brooklyn, then moved to Levittown and then Lafayette Hill as they had one, two and then three children: Allan, Robert, and Karen. After the second child, she left her job and dedicated her full time to being a wife and a homemaker.
When the children were grown, she returned to the University of Pennsylvania to pursue a second Master's Degree in French literature and Romance Langauges and continued to devoted her energies to her husband, her family, to reading, travel, and skiing, which she took up at the age of 43, skiing avidly into her 70s. She loved her children intensely and spoke of their accomplishments proudly. She also was a muse to her husband Stanley who adored her-he painted her, and photographed her, and they displayed a half dozen of these works all the walls of their house. Their marriage was magical.

Despite all the losses that occurred early in life, Dora built a life that filled with both significance and happiness. Education, she said, was the most important element in life and she was proud of her scholastic accomplishments. During the war, she hid her diploma, her baccalaureate's degree (with honors) in her underclothes while in hiding, and smuggled it across borders even when she was told to rid herself of all old identification in order to obtain repatriation. Seventy years later, she still had the diploma to show her children: of course, she graduated with the highest honors.
What we will always remember about Dora was her intelligence, spirit and charm. She had the ability to bring the light into others' eyes, to make them smile, and to make them remember her. It was all about her energy and her joie-de--vivre. She loved music, dance, cooking, reading, (especially The New Yorker) and animated, thoughtful conversation �in more than one language.
She refused to age-she always reported her true age as 30. That stayed true, even when her children, and then some of her grandchildren, passed that milestone. She would not be happy that we reported her true age above.
Dora wrote her memoirs---she called then Fragments of My Memoirs-- at the age of 90. Blessed with a photographic memory that allowed her to speak 8 languages, she nonetheless succumbed to the excruciatingly slow, merciless, and humiliating progression of Alzhemier's Disease. Through it all, she bore it with grace and dignity. And smiled.