Holocaust Survivor Speaking Schedule

Upcoming Holocaust Survivor talks, included with your admission ticket. 

SCHEDULE: 

Jackie Albin, Holocaust Survivor, Tuesday, December 10 at 1:00 p.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.

Halina Herman,  Holocaust Survivor, Wednesday, December 11 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.

Lisl Schick, Holocaust Survivor, Wednesday, December 11 at 1:00 p.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.

Betty Grebenschikoff, Holocaust Survivor, Thursday, December 12 at 10:00 a.m.

Betty Grebenschikoff’s family fled Nazi Germany during the 1930s and found refuge in Shanghai, China. When Grebenschikoff’s peaceful childhood in Berlin was shattered by Nazi violence against Jews, the family was forced to flee to China in 1939, one step ahead of the Gestapo. Shanghai was the only open port at that time that admitted European Jews without visas or passports. It became a place of refuge for about 20,000 refugees.

Grebenschikoff grew up in Shanghai, where the family tried to make a living under difficult circumstances. During World War II, the Jewish refugees were interned by Japanese authorities in a segregated area known as the Shanghai Ghetto. Life became even harder than before. In 1950 political events in China made yet another escape necessary, this time to Australia. Grebenschikoff finally realized her dream of coming to America in 1953.

Ed Herman, Holocaust Survivor, Friday, December 13 at 10:00 a.m.

Edward Herman was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1931 into an affluent Jewish family. When he ended the first grade, his father left to join the Soviet Army. After the Germans occupied Warsaw in 1939, Edward, his mother, and sister were forced to live in the Warsaw Ghetto. When the Germans began liquidating the ghetto, he hid in the attic of the home of a Christian family. His mother was able to get papers for him to cross over to Budapest, Hungary. When he reached Budapest, Edward lived on the streets until an orphanage was formed. He lived there until his mother, sister, and aunt arrived and he moved in with his aunt.  In the end of 1944, he was liberated. He did not reunite with his father for ten years.