Eve Kristine Vetulani Balfour: The Chalkboard Champion Who Was Once Imprisoned by the Nazis

One indisputable chalkboard champion is Eve Kristine Vetulani Balfour. Born a Catholic in Krakow, Poland, this remarkable educator came from a family that abhorred the Nazi regime. The Vetulanis adopted a Jewish woman during WWII, thereby saving her from the Nazis. Eve Kristine did not escape their clutches, however. In 1942, during the German occupation of Poland, she was forced to work in Nazi slave labor camps. Her knowledge of languages saved her life during World War II because she was more valuable to the Germans as a translator than a slave laborer. Fortunately, she was liberated by the Allies in 1945 from a camp in Nordhausen, the site of the construction of V-1 and V-2 rockets.

After the war, Eve Kristine worked as a translator for US Army intelligence while she attended Frankfurt University in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1950, she immigrated to the United States as a displaced person. Upon her arrival, she first enrolled at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. After moving to Maryland, she graduated from Frostburg State Teachers College, Maryland, in 1962, and earned her master's degree in French from Middlebury College, Vermont, in 1966.

For over twenty-five years Eve Kristine worked as an instructor of French, German, and Spanish at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, Maryland. She retired from the teaching profession in 1988. Able to speak Polish, Russian, German, Spanish, French, and Italian, Eve Kristine translated historical documents for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, after her retirement. She also worked for the Red Cross at their Tracing Bureau, assisting efforts to reunite Holocaust survivors with their families.

Eve Kristine passed away in 2004 at the age of 79, but she will always be remembered as a true chalkboard champion.