Newsletter

Every year, seven Rotary clubs in Minnesota gather to honor Veterans’ Day. This year, through coordination by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the featured speaker was a Holocaust survivor; other survivors attended and were honored at the event.

Dr. Sabina Zimering (above, second from left) spoke about her experience “hiding in the open” under a false identity.

Shown in the picture are other Holocaust survivors who live in the Twin Cities: from left Lucy Smith, who survived in hiding in Poland; Zimering; Margot DeWilde, survivor of Josef Mengele’s experiments; Mark Hanis, Genocide Intervention Network founder and grandson of four Holocaust survivors; Murray Brandys, concentration camp survivor; and Walter Schwarz, one of the “Ritchie Boys,” a group of young men who fled Nazi Germany and returned to Europe as soldiers in United States uniforms.

More than 350 Rotarians attended and for most of them, it was the first time they had heard a Holocaust survivor speak of these experiences. The event was filmed and shown on local cable-access stations.