Voices of Survival. Detail of a flyer from The Florida Holocaust Museum.
Voices of Survival is a weekly series of conversations at The Florida Holocaust Museum on Sundays at 1:00 p.m. It begins this Sunday, August 16. The museum is located at 55 5th Street S. in downtown St. Petersburg. The conversations are on the museum’s third floor and are included with museum admission.
August 16: Halina Herman
The first conversation is with Holocaust survivor Halina Herman. According to The Florida Holocaust Museum, Herman’s “father was killed in a Nazi slave-labor camp; Halina survived because her mother obtained false papers and placed her with a non-Jewish family, who raised her as a Christian child. After the war, she was reunited with her mother and learned about her Jewish identity.” She was born in 1939 in Warsaw.
August 23: John Rinde, Holocaust Survivor
“Born in Przemysl, Poland in 1935, John and his family lost their toy factory and apartment after the Soviet invasion in 1939, then endured the Lvov ghetto after Germany invaded in 1941 before his mother smuggled the family out using false papers to live as Polish Catholics in Lublin.”
August 30: David Baras, Son of Viola Baras
“David is the son of Holocaust Survivors and speaks about his parents’ experiences and their effects on him and his family. His mother, Viola Baras, survived three concentration camps and a death march during the Holocaust.”
September 6: Diane Mandell, Daughter of Halina and Ed Herman
“Diane is the daughter of two Holocaust Survivors. Her father, Ed, was in the Warsaw Ghetto. His mother tried to arrange a rescue operation, but he was abandoned by a man who was supposed to help him. Eventually, Ed ended up in an orphanage and was reunited with his mother after the war. Diane’s mother, Halina, survived the Holocaust passing as a Catholic child in a Polish village.”