WSC Newscenter | Auschwitz survivor Sam Fried To Speak April 14

Auschwitz survivor Sam Fried will speak with a question and answer session after the presentation in Gardner Auditorium on April 14 at 3:30 p.m.

Fried, a Holocaust survivor, has raised funds with help from others to provide college-level programs at five Nebraska institutions of higher learning including Wayne State College.

"If Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Holocaust teach us anything," he said, "they teach us that people of goodwill must face unpleasant truths and stand up against all forms of racism and bigotry."

Fried was a teenager in Auschwitz, arriving with the Hungarians, the last group of Jews to be captured. Interviewed by his granddaughter, Maggie Fried, when she was a staffer for her high school newspaper, he told her, I remember listening to the BBC radio about Hitler.

Hearing rumors about the impending invasion, Fried said a friend helped him devise an escape plan. But he returned home at the last minute and watched in horror as his parents were led away by the Nazis and neighbors who had been family friends began ransacking his home. Fried turned himself in and was deported to Auschwitz. He became prisoner #A5053, and though he eventually escaped, he weighed barely 80 pounds.

Creating a new fund, Fried has vowed to educate young people about the torture and slaughter of six million Jews and five million people whose political persuasion, disabilities and faith sent them to the gas chambers as well. Fried said the courses that will be taught at the University of Nebraska campuses in Omaha, Lincoln and Kearney as well as Creighton University and Wayne State College also will emphasize genocide occurring in parts of the world today.

"Education is the most important thing we can do today," he said. "If we don't educate students, history will repeat itself."
Through his fund, Fried was also instrumental in creating the Nebraska Holocaust Memorial at Wyuka Cemetery.

For more information, visit the website at www.holocausteducationfund.org

For more information, please contact:
Douglass Taber
Professor
Phone:402-375-7540
DoTaber1@wsc.edu