Kihei resident Risa F. Whiting, who survived the Holocaust that claimed her parents, died June 20 in New Milford, Conn., spending her last days with her daughter. She was 77.

Whiting and her husband, Robert, who predeceased her, were active in the Maui theater scene and organizers of the statewide Dr. Martin Luther King Peace Poetry Contest.

“She was an inspiration to many who knew her and a great supporter of peace,” said Melinda Gohn, a coordinator of the King poetry contest.

She was born Fanny Englander on Nov. 25, 1939, in Antwerp, Belgium, to diamond cutter Abraham Joseph and Chawe Englander, said Gohn.

Her parents died in Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland during World War II. She was separated from them at 2¢ years old and put into hiding with the Belgian family of Maurice and Denise Vander Voordt, according to a Honolulu Star-Bulletin interview in April 2004.

At age 8, after the war was over, Whiting learned that she was not the Vander Voordts’ daughter and that she was going to be adopted by a Jewish family in New York. Maurice and Anna Schwartz operated a New York City-based Yiddish theatrical company; the couple adopted her and her brother, Marvin, who had been living in an orphanage in Belgium.

She told the Star-Bulletin that she had been unable to locate any surviving relatives.

The Schwartzes introduced her to theater, and Whiting performed on Broadway as Evelyn Forman in the premier of Paddy Chayefsky’s “The Tenth Man.”

Later in life, she performed with her husband in the Maui Academy of Performing Arts production of “First Love,” Gohn said.

Whiting was among several honored in Hawaii for being Holocaust survivors by B’nai Brith and the University of Hawaii-Manoa’s Hillel Jewish student organization in 2004.

A Celebration of Life honoring Whiting took place at Kalama Park on July 15.

“Whiting is remembered by her Maui friends as a resilient and positive human being who cherished performing and breaking into song,” said Gohn. “She and her husband, Robert, traveled around the world together, and she made friends wherever she went.

“She said she was ‘born a performer. I was happiest on stage.’ ”