SEMO events to mark Holocaust

Hedy Epstein, a survivor of the Holocaust, and Jeany Soshnik, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, will participate in a panel discussion on April 3 at Southeast Missouri State University as part of activities for Holocaust Remembrance Week.

Epstein also will make a keynote Common Hour presentation at noon in Johnson Hall's lecture room.

A panel discussion will be held at 3 p.m. in Dempster Hall's Glenn Auditorium. She and Soshnik will participate in a panel discussion with Dr. Mitchel Gerber, Southeast professor of political science.

Soshnik will discuss her mother's experience of being rescued by the Aux Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, a major Jewish organization of the French resistance that saved thousands of children in France.

She will talk about her personal rescue in the Kindertransport in which almost 10,000 children from Nazi Germany and Austria were transported to England between December 1938 and Sept. 1, 1939.

Epstein was separated from her family at age 14 when her parents sent her to England on the Kindertransport. She never saw them again. In 1942, her family was sent to Auschwitz.

The university's remembrance of the Holocaust will begin on April 1 with the showing of the film, "Into the Arms of Strangers," at 7 p.m. in the University Center Ballroom. The Academy Award-winning documentary chronicles the lives of children saved through the Kindertransport. The film includes an interview with Epstein.

All of the university events are free and open to the public.