Zuzana Sermer was born on August 29, 1924, in the small town of Humenn�, in what is now Slovakia. She and Arthur Sermer married in July 1945 and lived under the Communist regime in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia for the next twenty-three years. They fled to Canada with their four children when the Soviets occupied the country in August 1968. Now a widow, Zuzana lives in Toronto.