Holocaust Survivor to Speak at JCC on Feb. 26

You have read about the Holocaust, now hear first-hand accounts from a former Holocaust prisoner and survivor. Jefferson Community College will host a presentation by Holocaust survivor, Esther Bauer, on Tuesday, February 26 at 7:30 p.m. in the Robert R. and Jean S. Sturtz Theater, McVean Student Center.  Admission to the presentation is free and the public is invited to attend.

Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1924 Bauer will share with audience members her harrowing experience as a Holocaust prisoner. Bauer was 18 years old when she and her family were taken by Nazis to  Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, a transit camp for Jews. Bauer’s father, a principle of a Jewish girls’ school, and her mother, a medical doctor, died within two years of being captured. While in the concentration camp, Bauer befriended and eventually married a fellow prisoner.  Shortly after their marriage, he transferred to another city to help build a new ghetto. In hopes of being reunited with her husband, Bauer volunteered to transfer under the same orders as her husband. Following in her husband’s footsteps, she learned he was actually taken to Auschwitz, a cluster of concentration and extermination camps, where he died. At the age of 21 before her life even had the chance to blossom, Bauer was a widow, fatherless, motherless, yet above all, a survivor.

For more information, call the JCC Student Activities office at 315-786-2431.

Sponsored by the JCC Campus Activities Board.