MCC Daily Tribune

Local Holocaust Survivors Speak on Campus Today

Today marks MCC's 28th annual Yom HaShoah Commemoration hosted by the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Project. Starting at 9:30 a.m., the commemoration provides you with opportunities to remember the lessons of the Holocaust, light candles of remembrance, listen to names of survivors in the quieted Flynn Campus Center Atrium, and learn from three local Holocaust Survivors who will give their personal testimonies beginning at 10 a.m. in the Warshof Conference Center, Flynn Campus Center (Monroe A).

The presence of the following Holocaust Survivors is made possible through HGHRP's partnership with the Center for Holocaust Awareness and Information at the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester:

10 to 11 a.m. Werner Schenk
11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Jeannine Korman
1 to 2 p.m. Sam Rind

Werner Schenk is from Luebeck, Germany. He and his family were arrested by the Gestapo many times but his dad, a specialist tool & die maker working on advanced military systems, was needed. After being alerted by a friend in the police department, he and his mother went into hiding with the help of nuns in the town's hospital. Werner attended school with a false identity, protected by the principal. His immediate family survived, but over 40 of his relatives were murdered in the camps.

Jeannine Korman, the child of refugees from Poland was born in Luneville, France in 1930. Her mother had tuberculosis so Jeannine lived in a series of orphanages near Strasbourg. When her father came to retrieve her, she learned her mother had died and she had a new stepmother. They went into hiding and moved frequently from place to place to hide. Nazi soldiers also stayed in one of their hiding places, Villegailhenc near the Pyrenees. Jeannine witnessed the soldiers' resentment of their own government. Her father committed suicide and after her stepsister's birth, Jeannine moved in with a family near Bordeaux where she remained until the end of the war

Sam Rind is a child survivor of the Holocaust. Born near Lublin, Poland in 1937, Sam's family was in various ghettos and forced labor camps where Sam's father was killed for the leather jacket on his back. Sam also witnessed his younger brother being killed in his mother's arms by a Nazi guard. He and his mother eventually escaped to the Ukranian ghetto of Szmerinka to be with other relatives. Sam had to dress as a girl to do this. At the end of the war, they returned to Poland to find relatives. Finding none, they formed a little kibbutz with other Jewish survivors but eventually wanted to leave because of continued anti-Semitism. They were not permitted entry to the United States where Sam's uncle lived so they went to Bolivia to be with another one of Sam's uncles. In 1960, Sam was able to come to the U.S. to attend college in Buffalo. He became an optician and is still in this profession today.

Join us in remembering and learning important lessons from the Holocaust.

Rosanna Yule
Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Project
04/12/2018