Mother-daughter duo tell life stories, reflect on remembrance in Ballantyne Auditorium presentation
The horrors of the Holocaust and World War II will be remembered in a presentation April 23 at Kirkwood Community College. A woman who survived the concentration camps of Poland will tell her story, as well as the continuing work she and her daughter share to keep awareness and hope alive into a new century. The free program is presented Thursday, April 23 at 11 a.m. in Ballantyne Auditorium on the main Kirkwood campus.
Irene Furst is a survivor of the German invasion of Poland and the siege of her home city of Ludz in the late 1930s and 1940s. The ghettoization of her community brought on starvation and disease in the overcrowded section of Ludz for four years, before the German army removed Furst and many others to the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Stutthof.
Remarkably, Irene Furst survived her imprisonment. Her camp was liberated by British forces in May, 1945. Following the war she met her husband, Gilbert who was himself a survivor of imprisonment in Latvia. They came to the U.S. in 1947 and settled in Maryland where they raised three children. Mrs. Furst now lives near her daughter and their family in the Pittsburgh area.
Her daughter, Linda Hurwitz shares the work of telling the story of Holocaust survival with her mother. Hurwitz is past director of the Holocaust Center of the United Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh and has also served as an educator, author and researcher. She is the editor of Flares of Memory: Stories of Childhood of Holocaust Survivors, a 92-story collection. Hurwitz has received several honors and awards, including the Elie Weisel Commemorative Medal in 2001.
Kirkwood’s April 23 presentation of Irene Furst and Linda Hurwitz is made possible with support of the Thaler Holocaust Committee, Kirkwood Social Sciences & Career Option department, Kirkwood Student Life and the Kirkwood Foundation. The program is free and open to the public.