Sylvia Weiner (born 1930) was the first woman to ever win the Boston Marathon’s women's masters division, which she did in 1975, at age 44 with a time of 3:21:38.[1]
She is a Holocaust survivor, born in Poland, taken from her family at age twelve in 1942 and sent to three concentration camps during the next two years.[1] [2] She went to Majdanek, Auschwitz, and then Bergen-Belsen.[3] In Bergen-Belsen she befriended Anne Frank, and was with her on the day that she died.
She was living in Montreal when she joined a YMHA because membership was required to enroll her daughter in the YMHA's nursery school.[1] There she took a fitness course which became a running class.[1] Later she joined a small, otherwise-all-male running group called the Wolf Pack after its leader, Wolf Bronet, who was also a Holocaust survivor.[1] She ran the Boston Marathon for the first time in 1974, with a time of 3:47.[1] Her best marathon time was a 3:15 at the Skylon Marathon in Buffalo in 1976.[1] At the Advil Mini Marathon 10K in Central Park, she won her age group one year, and finished second in the mother-daughter division with her daughter Debbie; in 2014 she won her division in the Leaf Peepers 5K in Waterbury, Vermont, in 48:36.[1]