Letter from Ronald Reagan to Elie Wiesel on the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize

This document is an event program for "Elie Wiesel: 'To Life!' A Celebration of 180 Jewish Lectures at 92Y," held on Thursday, November 20, 2014. It commemorates Elie Wiesel's 47-year association with 92Y and his profound impact through lectures on civil dialogue, education, arts, and Jewish values. The program includes an appreciation of Wiesel's life and work, detailing his biography, including his birth in Sighet, Transylvania, his experience in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, his acclaimed memoir "Night," and his roles as chairman of the President's Commission on the Holocaust and the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, as well as his numerous awards, such as the Nobel Peace Prize. The event features musical performances by the Young People's Chorus of New York City and the Zukerman Trio, and speeches by Gary Rosenblatt, Joe Lieberman, Jeff Greenfield, and Eric Kandel. Brief biographies of the speakers and performers are provided, alongside a comprehensive list of 92Y's Board of Directors, honorary directors, and various individual and organizational donors and funders.

This document is a program for a "Musical Evening" held in honor of Professor Elie Wiesel, featuring "Birthday Greetings" and a performance of "Hatikva." The program lists a diverse selection of musical pieces, including works by Felix Mendelssohn, J.S. Bach, Ernst Bloch, Pablo de Sarasate, Mitch Leigh, Rodgers & Hammerstein, and George Gershwin, along with various spirituals. The performers include soloists such as Sirena Huang (violin), Terry Cook (bass-baritone), Camellia Johnson (soprano), Laura Kennedy (piano), Justin T. Blackwell (piano), and the Boston University Chamber Chorus conducted by Dr. Ann Howard Jones. The program also provides detailed biographies of the main artists and the conductor, highlighting their significant careers and contributions to music globally, and lists the names of all individual members of the Boston University Chamber Chorus.

Ilsa R. Katz was born December 10, 1921 in Venningen, Pfalz, Germany. Her father was a kosher butcher and a World War I veteran. She briefly describes her life and education (both secular and religious) before and after Hitler came to power including the escalating anti-Jewish restrictions and increasing antisemitism.

During Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, their synagogue was burned and all Jewish men were arrested. A non-Jewish villager saved the Torah scroll. The next morning all Jews were rounded up and deported by bus to a meadow near Karlsruhe, Baden.

Because her father had obtained Visas, Ilsa and her family were able to leave for the United States from Hamburg, Germany to Philadelphia in December 1938. Most of her relatives were deported and killed. Ilsa talks about their life in Philadelphia, how they made a living and adjusted to life in America.

Interviewee: KATZ, Ilsa R. Date: Sept. 11, 1989

Myra Davis, nee Miki Heller, was born July 12, 1936 in Kovno, Lithuania, the only child in an affluent Jewish family. Her parents were Franz and Fanny Heller. After the Russian invasion in 1940, her family was forced to move from their large home to much smaller quarters. In 1940, they immigrated to Japan with transit visas and visas for Curacao, which were not used. Instead, they went to Shanghai, in 1941, after a year in Kobe, Japan, where Myra attended a French Catholic school.

In the French quarter of Shanghai, they lived comfortably until the Japanese occupation forced them into the Hongkew Ghetto. Her father, despondent about their impoverishment, committed suicide. When the war ended, her mother worked for the American Army and met a Jewish colonel, David Bare (phonetic), whom she married in 1947. The family lived in Beijing, China, Linz, Austria and South Carolina, United States. Myra became a translator for the American government, married Arnold Davis and they live with their two children in Boca Raton, Florida.

Recorded at the Rickshaw Reunion - a meeting in October 1999 at the Holiday Inn in Philadelphia of refugees who found refuge in Shanghai during World War II.

Jack Zaifman was born in Radom, Poland on March 2, l925 into an Orthodox Jewish family. His father was a merchant. He attended public school and chederuntil age l4. He describes the savagery of the German bombing and invasion of Radom in September l939. Escaping from a round-up of Jews, he bicycled to Wolanow and lived for a year with a Jewish family until that small town was liquidated. He was taken for slave labor at a nearby camp manned by Gestapo, Ukrainian and Lithuanian guards. He worked as a tailor for the German Army, witnessed a massacre of 350 Jews and had to dig trenches to bury the dead. When he was ill with typhoid fever, a righteous German soldier took him to the Rodomer Ghetto hospital.

In autumn of 1941, Jack was sent to Blizyn labor camp, near the German border, where he was betrayed by a Jewish Kapo and severely beaten by guards when he tried to help another prisoner. Among the 3,000 survivors (out of l0,000) of Blizyn, he was shipped to Auschwitz where he sorted clothing of the dead. He describes the train ride, selections and his bunk make being selected for an experiment by Mengele. Jack describes walking over to another Kommando one day which was deported to Dachau where he endured brutal labor, carrying cement and laying pipes. During a death march from Dachau, April l945, he was liberated by Americans and taken to a hospital at Wolfratshausen, weighing 70 pounds. At the Feldafing DP camp he met and married his wife; they came to the United States in April l949. He began speaking in high schools and colleges about his experience in l977.

Sylvia Schneider, née Balbierer, was born in Cologne, Germany on May 4, 1928 to an Orthodox Jewish family. Her father, a language teacher was born in Belgium of Russian ancestry. Her mother was from Krakow, Poland. A happy childhood ended for Sylvia in 1935-36, when her sister Ruth was beaten by Hitler youth. Years later, while studying nursing in England, Ruth died in 1943 of a brain aneurysm presumably caused by that injury.

On October 28, 1938, the Gestapo deported Sylvia, Ruth and their mother, along with many others with Polish passports to Zbaszyn. She described freezing living conditions in 1938-39 in the no man's land between the German and Polish borders. In May 1939 her family joined an aunt in Krakow and then went to Otwock, near Warsaw for the girls to await a Kindertransport ship to England. They were parted from their mother and experienced unhappy stays in private homes and a children's hostel, but Sylvia names several caring women who befriended her. In 1947, she immigrated to the United States, where she married and had a daughter. She gave up her Orthodox religious faith when she learned that her mother was gassed at Auschwitz and her father died in another camp, but she continued to identify herself as a traditional Jew.