CONCORD — More than a dozen baby opossums are nestled in empty tissue boxes in wire cages at Eva Berek’s house, where she is caring for them until they are big enough to release into the wild.

As a Lindsay Wildlife Experience volunteer since 1980, Berek has nurtured hundreds of injured or orphaned animals — from hand-feeding tiny squirrels with a syringe to serving frozen chicks to a kestrel with a damaged wing.

“I’ve always been an animal person,” said Berek, 94, at her Concord home where a menagerie of wooden, stone and glass figurines collected since her childhood in Germany is on display in every room. She also has a dog, canary, parakeet and a guinea pig.

“If an animal is in distress and I’m able to help, I will. If I can’t, I’ll get help.”

Berek is one of 420 rehabilitation volunteers who cared for about half of the 6,000 animals Lindsay’s hospital received last year. Most of the rescues were birds, including mourning doves, mallard ducks and house finches — victims of disease and cats; or babies orphaned by their mother’s run-in with a vehicle.

The hospital takes in more opossums than any other mammal, nearly 500 so far this year, and most of those in home care are released, according to Chris Beard, Lindsay’s wildlife rehabilitation volunteer coordinator.

For some time, Berek was one of the few volunteers who could do the multiple daily syringe feedings small opossums require, Beard said. Last year, she took care of 105 opossums, hospital records show.

Since they are so young, some of Berek’s charges don’t survive, but she remains positive and concentrates on the ones she’s able to save, Beard said.

“She’s always extremely eager. Sometimes it’s almost a question of trying to get her to not take possums,” he said. “If she had the cage space, she would have no problem scooping them all up.”

Eugenie Riberi, Lindsay’s wildlife rehabilitation hospital manager, described Berek as always smiling and bubbly.

An “I (heart) Opossums” car magnet and doormat announcing the “Possum Lady lives here” are indicators of Berek’s affinity for the oft-maligned marsupials.

“Look how pretty they are,” she said as she checked a baby’s nose to see if it needed an iron supplement. “You may not think so, but I love them.”

But sharing her home with a passel of opossums actually may be the least remarkable thing about Berek, who escaped the horrors of the Holocaust.

Sponsored by an uncle who lived in New York, Berek and her parents fled Berlin in 1940 for the United States, leaving behind relatives and friends who would perish in the concentration camps. She also lost her beloved wire hair fox terrier, Puck.

“Nobody would take the dog because he came from a Jewish family, he was a Jewish dog,” Berek recalled. “So we had to put him down.”

During the seven-week journey, Berek and her parents traveled through Russia and China to Yokohama, Japan, where they boarded a steamer bound for San Francisco. When the ship sailed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, Berek said she was overwhelmed by joy and relief.

“We were free.”

She spent her 19th birthday on Angel Island, where the government processed and detained immigrants. She worked first as a busgirl in a department store employee cafeteria, and later as a sales clerk.

Following a whirlwind six-month courtship, at 22 she married Seymour Berek in her parents’ apartment and honeymooned in Santa Cruz on his three-day pass from the Army. She and her husband, who studied optometry at UC Berkeley on the GI Bill after the war, settled in Antioch and stayed together until his death on her birthday in 1999. Ten years ago, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

“So, I’m a survivor twice, once from Hitler Germany and once from cancer,” said Berek, who will be 95 in September.

In 1968, she reluctantly returned to Germany at her husband’s urging. During that visit, Berek sought out her father’s former boss, who late at night would deliver boxes of food to supplement her family’s meager weekly rations of one egg and a quarter-pound of meat per person.

“That’s how we survived,” she said. “I was able to thank him.”

Margaret Salfen, whose father was a close friend of Berek’s father, has known her since childhood.

“She’s such an amazing lady. I love her so much, and I have so much respect for her,” Salfen said.

They share a love for animals, and Salfen, who has five dogs and four birds at her Woodside home, found Berek’s rescue Yorkshire terrier, Miss Tootsie.

“She is very smart and witty and very opinionated,” said Salfen, 69. “She’s a strong woman, but she’s got a heart of gold; just truly a kind, compassionate, caring person. This world would do much better with more people like her.”

As an immigrant who came to the United States seeking freedom and safety, she’s sickened by the refugee crisis roiling Europe. In fact, her unique perspective on freedom plays a role in her volunteer work with Lindsay. The most rewarding part of that service, she said, is returning animals to the wild, giving them back their freedom.

“For the last two or three years I keep saying, I wonder if this is my last year. You know, I’m almost 95, and I’m not going to be here forever,” Berek said. “I do want to do it as long as I possibly can.”

Lisa P. White covers Concord and Pleasant Hill. Contact her at 925-943-8011. Follow her at Twitter.com/lisa_p_white.