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Survivors to speak Friday

Gerda Siefer owes her life to her father’s personal network. As a child in Nazi Germany, her father’s connections enabled her to go into hiding with a Polish woman living with false papers. Siefer was responsible of taking care of the entire family while the Polish woman went to work. But years later, when the war ended, she was left stranded without a family.

Siefer will speak at the Holocaust Survivor Luncheon at the Alpert Jewish Community Center on Friday, which is hosted by students from a CSULB history class that focuses on the Holocaust.

One of the three students organizing the event, Alyssa Wilson, a junior interdisciplinary major, said students in the class had a choice to participate in the service project or write papers throughout the semester.

“My professor, Jeffrey Blutzinger, has this event every semester,” Wilson said. “He does it as an educational tool and to commemorate both the victims and survivors of the Holocaust.

Students who chose to participate in the service project interview Holocaust survivors and pick which ones will speak at the luncheon. Wilson said the featured speakers explore a broad range of experiences from the Holocaust.

The three survivors speaking are Eve Turkheimer, who moved children out of Germany as a part of the kindertransport, Willy Black, who was in the women’s camp, and Gerda Seifer.

“Choosing the service project rather than writing some papers gave me such insight to what happened during Nazi Germany I could have never read in a book,” said Analigh Lopez, a junior history major and another student organizing the event. “It was more personal because you had this survivor sitting right in front of you.”

Lopez learned to appreciate her own life through hearing the stories, becoming inspired by the how glad they were to be alive.

She said she heard “no traces of hate or vengeance in their voices.”

“That alone is such a beautiful thing that teaches us as humans that there is hope to move on from events like these and learn from them,” Lopez said.

She hopes students will understand the reality of the Holocaust through the survivors’ stories and will awaken to genocide and hate present today, such as the genocide in Sudan.

“It’s up to each individual to take a stand against injustice to truly put a stop to hate,” Lopez said.

Wilson urges people to understand that there is a difference between race, religion, and culture.

“Jews are not a race, but a religion or culture,” Wilson said.

History 304 is held once a week and focuses on studies of the Holocaust. Wilson stated she took this class because her job at a Kosher Deli sparked an interest in the Jewish community.

“I didn’t work there much longer but I was blessed with the interest,” Wilson said.

The luncheon will begin at 11 a.m. with a social hour for the survivors and attendees. A slideshow clarifying various Holocaust terms will be shown as people eat and then survivors will speak for an hour and a half each about their experiences. The audience may ask the survivors questions afterward until 3 p.m.

The Alpert Jewish Community Center is located at 3801 E. Willow St. in Long Beach.

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