The Birds Sang Eulogies

Friday, June 10 2022 - 10AM-12PM (MST) SPEAKER: Mirla G. Raz, daughter of Holocaust Survivors Mirla Geclewicz Raz is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Her father was living in Lodz when the Germans entered in September 1939. Draconian laws were put into place immediately. In March 1940, the Jews of Lodz were trapped inside the Lodz Ghetto. When the Lodz Ghetto was liquidated in August 1944, her father and his remaining family members were shipped to Auschwitz. Ms. Raz’s mother was living in the city of Lvov (now Lviv in Ukraine) when Hitler broke his pact with Stalin. Her mother and her family were forced into the Lvov Ghetto. She escaped into Germany where she worked as a maid in...

Rescued

RESCUED Friday, June 24, 2022 - 10:00 am to 12:00 pm MST SPEAKER: Holocaust Survivor, Suly Chenkin. Suly Chenkinwas born in Kovno, Lithuania. As a ten month old, Suly’s family, together with about 40,000 other Jews were interned in the Kovno Ghetto. Her life was spared at 3 1/2 when her parents sent her into hiding with a woman named Miriam Shulman. Please join us as Suly tells her incredible story of perseverance and courage and how she eventually came to be reunited with her family. Register: afusco@azjhs.org

You Are My Liberator

Friday, July 8, 2022 - 10:00 am to 12:00 pm (MST) SPEAKER: US Liberator of World War II, Vernon Schmidt Register: afusco@azjhs.org  

Sevek & the Holocaust The Boy Who Refused to Die

  Friday, August 12, 2022 - 10:00 am to 12:00 pm (MST) SPEAKER: Holocaust survivor, Sidney “Sevek” Finkel Sidney “Sevek” Finkel is the author of Sevek and the Holocaust, The Boy Who Refused to Die. This Holocaust seminar will focus on an eight-year-old Sevek, capturing the emotions of a boy who loses his home, his family and ultimately his humanity by the time he reaches the age of fourteen. This seminar is used to help with recently passed legislation that offers teachers an opportunity to apply this session in their curriculum in the State of Arizona, Join is on August 12 as Finkel will share his story, relaying a message of tolerance, hope and love. Sidney Finkel received the Philip K Weiss...

Online Discussion with Jeremy Schonfeld

  “Iron & Coal” is a powerful and deeply personal rock-opera by critically acclaimed composer and performer, Jeremy Schonfeld. Taking inspiration from his father Gustav’s memoir, “Absence of Closure,” Schonfeld traces his father’s attempts to create a life out of the ashes, having spent a year in concentration camps at the age of ten. Schonfeld weaves together memories of his own childhood, growing up under the long shadows of Auschwitz, all while coming to terms with the death of his father and the birth of his own son. The ghosts of a distant, vanished world, both of horror and the iron will to survive, mix with the present in this soaring, emotional, and spiritual tribute. Register: https://tinyurl.com/ns86ctwn   Iron & Coal...

Online Book Discussion with Author Gina Roitman: My Mother, the Nazi Midwife and Me

IMAGINE learning that 52 Jewish newborns “died” right after their birth in one DP camp in Germany – between 1946-1947!!! Who killed them and why? JOIN US: The Phoenix Holocaust Association invites you to an interview with Gina Roitman, award winning writer, poet, essayist, and a Second Generation, born in the Passau DP Camp, Germany, to Polish survivor parents. We will focus on her two books and also describe the post-war horrors reflected in her documentary film “My Mother, the Nazi Midwife and Me.” Also about her books: Tell Me a Story, Tell me the Truth; Don’t Ask. Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at 5:30 PM Arizona time; 7:30 PM EST; 4:30 PM Pacific (check your time zones). To register: https://tinyurl.com/2p87b2dv  ...

Discussion with Author, Martin Goldsmith: The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany.

The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany Discussion with Author, Martin Goldsmith   December 15, 2022 at 2PM (MST) Discussion via ZOOM   Set amid the growing tyranny of Germany's Third Reich, here is the riveting and emotional tale of Günther Goldschmidt and Rosemarie Gumpert, two courageous Jewish musicians who struggled to perform under unimaginable circumstances―and found themselves falling in love in a country bent on destroying them. Beautifully and simply told by their son, National Public Radio commentator Martin Goldsmith, The Inextinguishable Symphony takes us from the cafés of Frankfurt, where Rosemarie and Günther fell in love, to the concert halls that offered solace and hope for the beleaguered Jews, to the United...

Online Book Discussion with Author Dan Grunfeld: By the Grace of the Game: The Holocaust, a Basketball Legacy and an Unprecedented American Dream

  By the Grace of the Game: The Holocaust, a Basketball Legacy and an Unprecedented American Dream Feb 15th @ 5:00 pm MST Register: https://tinyurl.com/mr3ebppa Dan Grunfeld is 3rd Generation Holocaust Descendant, a former professional basketball player, an accomplished writer, and a proud graduate of Stanford University. Join us when he discusses his family's multi-generational epic detailing history's only known journey from Auschwitz to the NBA. From the grips of the Nazis to the top of the Olympic podium, from the cheap seats to center stage at Madison Square Garden, from yellow stars to silver spoons, this complex tale traverses the spectrum of the human experience to detail how perseverance, love, and legacy can survive through generations, carried on the...

Holding onto the Hate Let the Haters Win

  Friday, February 24, 2023, 10AM-12PM (MST) Featured Guest: Holocaust Survivor, Andrew Schot Andrew Schot was 9 years old in 1940 when the Germans invaded the Netherlands. He was almost two years younger than Anne Frank and about 5 years younger than her sister Margot. Jewish students were banned from educational institutions, forced into smaller Jews only schools, this is where Andrew met Anne and through Anne, her sister Margot. While Andrew did not grow up in a Jewish home and was not considered a Jew according to Jewish Law (Andrew’s father was Jewish, his mother was not), Andrew was labeled a full blooded Jew by the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws. He was forced to wear a yellow star and recalls...

Online Discussion Miriam Friedmann

Witness—The Art Legacy of Holocaust Survivor David Friedman Wednesday, March 8 5:00pmMST Registration: https://tinyurl.com/28ss88ve Please join PHA for an online discussion with Miriam Friedman Miriam Friedman Morris will talk about her father, David Friedman’s life through art and her journey to find his Nazi-looted art and preserve her father’s legacy. Austrian born David Friedman(n) 1893-1980 was a Holocaust survivor whose drawings of persecution gave him purpose to fight antisemitism and racial hatred. An accomplished painter, he was renowned for his portraits drawn from life and leading Berlin press artist of the 1920’s. Friedman’s life’s work was Nazi-looted and his promising career was destroyed. He survived the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz to paint again

A Twist of Fate

  Friday, March 24, 2022 - 10AM-12PM (MST) SPEAKER: Karen Zubkoff Perna Karen Perna, a descendant of Holocaust survivors, is fortunate enough to have known her great-grandparents and grandparents, who fled Germany with her mother and aunt to escape the darkest days of human history, arriving in the US in March 1940. Karen has had a lifelong desire to share her family’s history to enrich others not only about the Holocaust, but also about genocides still happening in our world today. Karen found the Phoenix Holocaust Association (PHA) and realized the organization aligns with her beliefs. She feels honored to serve on the PHA Board, as Coordinator of the PHA Speakers Bureau (arranging Holocaust speakers for schools and other organizations), and...

David de Jong talks about his book, Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties

Please join us for an online discussion with author David de Jong on Monday April 3, 2023 5 pm MST (8 pm EST, 7 pm CST) A groundbreaking investigation of how Germany’s wealthiest men helped the Nazis grab power and how the Nazis helped German tycoons make billions off the horrors of the Third Reich and World War II. In this landmark work of investigative journalism, David de Jong reveals the true story of how Germany’s wealthiest business dynasties amassed untold money and power by abetting the atrocities of the Third Reich. De Jong shows how these tycoons seized Jewish businesses, procured slave laborers, and ramped up weapons production to equip Hitler’s army as Europe burned around them. The brutal...