Eva Ecker, 96

Eva Ecker, who survived the Nazi period in Hungary during World War II, died on Dec. 29 at home in Springs. She had just finished dinner and was sitting with family.

During the war, Ms. Ecker helped to protect and hide her younger sister, Juidith Leiber, when Jews were called to assemble in the streets of Budapest for deportation. Their father had been sent to a labor camp, but the family was spared after he obtained a Swiss pass, which provided diplomatic immunity. The pass is now in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Ecker was born on Oct. 18, 1918, in Budapest to Emil Peto and the former Helene Spitzer. She and her sister were prohibited from attending university. Instead, Ms. Ecker studied to become a pastry chef and her sister learned to make handbags.

She was first married to Carl Wagoner, who was with the State Department, and she went with him to Brazil and Trans Jordan before she followed her sister to this country. The marriage ended in divorce. She and Joseph Ecker, a New Jersey physician, were married in 1955. In a happy marriage that lasted 49 years, they lived in New Brunswick, N.J., and New York City, and were inveterate travelers.

Ms. Ecker also worked at her sister’s company, Magid Handbags, in the 1960s. Ms. Leiber’s jeweled handbags have since been prized by American first ladies and Queen Elizabeth and are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a private museum in Springs. Ms. Ecker moved to Springs to live with her sister and brother-in-law, Gerson Leiber, who survive, after her husband’s death in 2004.

 A graveside service was held on Sunday afternoon at Shaarey Pardes Cemetery in Springs, with Debra Stein, cantor of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, officiating. A reception followed at the Ecker and Leiber house in Springs.

Memorial donations have been suggested for the Leiber Foundation, c/o Rochlin, Greenblatt & Chalk, 600 Old Country Road, Garden City 11530.