Zuzana Sermer was born in the small town of Humenne in what is now Slovakia. She and Arthur Sermer married in July 1945 and lived under a Communist regime in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia for the next twenty-three years. They raised four children there, but fled to Canada when the Soviets occupied the country in August 1968. Now a widow, Zuzana lives in Toronto, where she paints and enjoys life in Canada surrounded by her large extended family.