William Paterson University Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Sponsors Program About Childhood Survivors of the Holocaust

The William Paterson University Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies will host three survivors of the Holocaust who, as children, survived the concentration camps by hiding or being part of a Kindertransport, a pre-war program which removed the children from their homes and families to the relative safety of England for the duration of the war.

“Against All Odds: Children Who Survived the Holocaust” will be held on April 22 at 7 p.m. in the David and Lorraine Cheng Library auditorium on the campus in Wayne. Admission is free and includes a screening of the film, “Testimony of the Human Spirit,” a documentary about children hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust.

The survivors will speak about their experiences. Siegmar Silber, a former Kindertransport child, and now a patent attorney and artist; Lola Margulies, hidden as a child in Poland, now a biologist; and Ed Lessing, a former teen fugitive from the Nazis who went into hiding in Holland, now a retired graphic designer.
They were part of the estimated 1.6 million Jewish children who lived in Europe before the war, and are among the approximately 400,000 who survived.

This program is coordinated by Miryam Wahrman, a professor of biology at William Paterson, and Peter Stein, a William Paterson professor of sociology. They are co-directors of the University’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. For further information please call Wahrman at 973 -720-3456 or
Stein at 973-720-3429 or send an e-mail to wahrmanm@wpunj.edu or steinp@wpunj.edu.

3/25/04
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For Further Information, contact:

Mary Beth Zeman, Director, Public Relations 973-720-2966

3/25/04