Holocaust Survivor Speaking Schedule

Upcoming Holocaust Survivor talks, included with your admission ticket. 

SCHEDULE: 

Jackie Albin, Holocaust Survivor, Tuesday, January 28 at 10:00 a.m.

Jacqueline (Jackie) Albin was born in Belfort, France in 1937, two years before the beginning of World War II. When Jackie was two years old, her father was drafted into the French army where he served from 1939-1942. Jackie and her mother lived with her grandparents in Gex, a town in France near the Switzerland border, that had become part of the occupied zone. In 1942, her grandparents were sent to Auschwitz where they were gassed on their arrival.

In 1944, when the Germans were losing the war, Jackie, her mother, her newly born sister, and a group of others fled to the mountains because it was becoming more and more dangerous for them. Her father, who had joined the French Resistance, stayed behind to fight. After the war ended, Jackie’s mother was able to reunite with her mother and brothers–German Jews who managed to leave Germany in time and who were already living in Chicago.

Lisl Schick, Holocaust Survivor, Wednesday, January 29 at 11:00 a.m.

Lisl Schick was born in Vienna, Austria in 1927. In 1939, at age eleven, she and her seven-year-old brother escaped Nazi-occupied Austria on a Kindertransport train for England, where they lived for six years before being reunited with their parents in New York.

Roland Levi,  Holocaust Survivor, Thursday, January 30 at 10:30 a.m.

Roland Levi was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1939. In 1943, he began preschool at the Institute de Notre Dame de Sion. The Sisters accepted the responsibility of hiding the children from the Nazis at the Institute.

Roland’s mother and father were arrested and taken to the Dossin Barracks in Mechelen. In April 1944, two members of the Belgian Gestapo arrived at the Institute Notre Dame de Sion and removed Nadya and Roland from their school. Both were sent to the Wezembeek Orphanage, eventually be sent to Auschwitz.

After arriving at the train station, Marie Blum Albert, a well-educated woman, was able to confront the guards and inform them of an agreement between the Nazis, the queen mother Isabella and Cardinal Jozef-Ernest van Roey, stating that Belgian Jewish children under the age of 16 were not to be sent to Auschwitz. She negotiated with guards and obtained the release of numerous Jewish children from the Wezembeek orphanage, including Nadya and Roland. The children were returned to the orphanage.

Roland and Nadya were liberated in September 1944. Roland’s parents survived Auschwitz but their health had been destroyed and they passed away in the late 1940s.

Halina Herman,  Holocaust Survivor, Friday, January 31 at 10:00 a.m.

Halina Herman was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1939. Her father was a physician and was sent away by the Germans to one of the slave-labor camps in April 1941. Halina never saw him again. Halina’s mother obtained false papers and got a job as a maid in Cracow. She placed Halina with a non-Jewish family who raised her as a Christian child. After the war, Halina was reunited with her mother and continued to go to church until the mother revealed their Jewish identity to her in 1949. They went to France where they stayed until they were able to immigrate to Canada.