An Evening With Holocaust Survivor Louise Lawerence-Israels

The timing of this talk couldn't be better given the recent increase in violence towards Jewish Cemeteries and Synagogues. The Tremont School Fund and U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum present an evening with Louise Lawrence-Israels on Monday, March 20th, 2017 from 6 to 8 PM at the Bass Harbor Memorial Library.

Louise was born in Haarlem, the Netherlands, in 1942. By the time she was born antisemitic laws were enacted and Jews were forced to wear a yellow star by the Nazis.

By July of 1942 deportations of Jews from the Netherlands to the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Sobibor had begun. In January 1943 Louise and her family were ordered to move to Amsterdam, and shortly thereafter went into hiding to escape deportation. Louise’s parents tried to give the children a “normal” childhood in hiding; playing and learning colors, letters, and songs.On May 5, 1945, Canadian forces liberated Amsterdam. Louise was three years old.

You are invited to hear these and more stories and learn what it was like to not only live in hiding during the war, but how that early child experience has shaped her life.

For more information please call the library at 244-3798.