Calendar of Events

The Thaler Holocaust Remembrance Fund Guest Speakers: Michael Bornstein and Debbie Holinstat

In 1945, in a now-famous piece of archival footage, four-year-old Michael Bornstein was filmed by Soviet soldiers as he was carried out of Auschwitz in his grandmother’s arms. Survivors Club tells the unforgettable story of how a father’s courageous wit, a mother’s fierce love, and one perfectly timed illness saved Michael’s life, and how others in his family from Zarki, Poland, dodged death at the hands of the Nazis time and again with incredible deftness. Working from his own recollections as well as extensive interviews with relatives and survivors who knew the family, Michael relates his inspirational story with the help of his daughter, Debbie Bornstein Holinstat, a broadcast news producer who started her career in Iowa in the 1990s. Shocking, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting, this narrative nonfiction offers an indelible depiction of what happened to one Polish village in the wake of the German invasion in 1939.

Now, armed with new information about his survival, and against a backdrop of rising antisemitic crimes worldwide, Michael and Debbie will share what they’ve learned. Book signings will follow the event.

The event is sponsored by the David and Joan Thaler Holocaust Memorial Fund and the Inter-Religious Council of Linn County as part of the annual Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.

More information is available online at holocausteducate.org.

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