Holocaust Survivor to Speak at UW Monday

Jan. 22, 2007 -- Child Holocaust survivor, Jack Adler of Denver, will speak Monday, Jan. 29, at 2 p.m. in the University of Wyoming College of Arts and Sciences auditorium.

The presentation is the first in a spring semester Distinguished Speaker Series sponsored by the UW Graduate School. Adler speaks about his concentration camp survival to more than 20,000 students each year.

Adler's family owned and operated a successful textile business in Poland, but everything changed during the first week of September, 1939, when Nazi soldiers marched into and occupied his hometown of Pabianice. Later, his mother and brother died in captivity and in 1944 Adler and his remaining family members, his father and two sisters, were sent to the Auschwitz/Birkenau camp, where his sisters were murdered.

He and his father were selected to work at the Kaufering concentration camp in Germany and then moved to Dachau. Adler was the only member of his immediate family to survive the camps.

At age 16, Adler was liberated on May 1, 1945, and moved to Chicago a year later as a war orphan. He learned English, graduated high school and went to college. He met his future wife in 1952 and they have two children.

He associated with a small group of Jewish refugees in his new home of Skokie, Ill., but rarely discussed his wartime experiences with anyone, including his children. It wasn't until his children had grown and had children of their own that he began to open up about his past.

For more information, call Missy Samp, assistant to the Graduate School dean, at (307) 766-3795.

Photo

Holocaust survivor Jack Adler will speak Monday, Jan. 29, at 2 p.m. in the University of Wyoming College of Arts and Sciences auditorium. He appeared on UWTV’s Wyoming Signatures in March of 2005. View the full interview. Produced by University of Wyoming Television, Wyoming Signatures is a statewide public television show that highlights the people, places, and issues of Wyoming. Wyoming Signatures has aired monthly on Wyoming Public Television since April of 1988. Guests on Wyoming Signatures range from local artists and authors to politicians and professors. In a state with very little media representation, it is unique in thoroughly exploring issues that face the state of Wyoming and its people. Wyoming Signatures airs on KCWC-Wyoming Public TV at 7:30 p.m. the first and third Thursdays of every month and again the following Sunday at 5:30 p.m.

Posted on Monday, January 22, 2007