On April 9, the University of New Haven will be welcoming keynote speaker Anita Schorr to their campus to talk about her experiences during the Holocaust.
Schorr is one of the youngest Holocaust survivors. The lone survivor population is diminishing daily. Schorr was eight years old when Nazis invaded her hometown in Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1941. She was labeled as number 71,569, and has that tattooed on her left forearm. She was first sent to a Terezin concentration camp then later to Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp in Poland. She survived on her courage and by digging trenches during the WWII.
“The punishment for everything in Auschwitz was being shot,” she said. She was imprisoned for four years. The hardships she faced began with suffocating cattle cars that delivered the family to their first camp, to starvation, daily humiliation, disease, gas chambers and crematoriums, forced labor and, finally, liberation from Auschwitz by British soldiers on April 15, 1945.
Schorr was the only member of her family to survive and tells her story to ensure that the nightmares of prejudice and violence she and her fellow Jews endured would not happen again.
Schorr lived in Israel after the war, where she got married and had a son. Schorr now resides in Westport , Conn. After 30 years of silence, she is an activist who encourages her audience to be the same to make sure that another Holocaust is not possible.
“Nobody stood up,” she said. “Nobody said ‘no.’” Schorr aims to “show you what happens when you don’t stand up to bullies. We have to be guards. Remembering is not enough,” she said. “Step in and be a hero.”
The event will be held in Dodds Theater and, in addition to Schorr, there will be a candle lighting, dramatic reading, reflections, tributes, reading of victims’ names, a moment of silence, musical pieces and a memorial bless. Students in various organizations, USGA, the genocide class taught at UNH, and volunteers will be among the many participating in the event. This year will mark the tenth annual Holocaust Remembrance Day at UNH.
