The 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz & the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust
Yesterday, 27 January 2015, was the 70th Anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by Soviet forces, and the occasion is annually marked by the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust . The United Kingdom’s Telegraph newspaper has an aggregator of stories regarding worldwide Holocaust memorial events.
The staff of Heir Hunters International attended a Holocaust Survivors Panel held at The National World War II Museum. “The event launches the Museum’s ‘Year of Remembrance,’ focusing on the 70th Anniversary of the Liberations that took place around the world as a result of the Allied Victory.” Over the forthcoming year, the museum will hold events exploring the last year of the war in regards to the Holocaust, with participants being “survivors, liberators and perpetrators.”
The Survivors Panel at the National WWII Museum attended by Shar Mansukani & John Hilbert, Heir Hunters International.
The three members of the Survivors Panel were:
Left: Mark Rubin was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937. At the outbreak of the war, a Gentile family secreted his family until a daughter reported the illicit activity to Nazi authorities. Allied soldiers liberated Mark and his family from the Terezin camp in April 1945.
Middle: Luna Kaufman was born in Poland in 1926. Imprisoned with her mother in the work camp featured in Steven Speilberg’s 1993 movie Schindler’s List, she survived a harrowing experience in the Krakow-Ploazow camp run by the psychopathic Commandant Amon Göth. In 2009, ComteQ Publishing released Ms. Kaufman”s autobiography: Luna’s Life, A Journey of Forgiveness and Triumph.
Right: Martin Greenfield was a fifteen year old boy in Czechoslovakia when Nazis deported the Jews in his village to Auschwitz. Eventually liberated by Americans at the Buchenwald camp, he was the only member of his family to survive. Upon arrival at Auschwitz, the notorious “Angel of Death,” Dr. Josef Mengele segregated Martin’s family. Mengele sent Martin and his father to the right, sparing their lives, if only for a short time, to work in the death camp, while Mengele sent his mother, two siblings, and his grandparents to the left, who had, at most, fifteen minutes to live. In 2014, Regnery Publishing published Mr. Greenfield’s autobiography: Measure of a Man – A Memoir: From Auschwitz Survivor to Presidents’ Tailor.
Presently, Heir Hunters International is conducting a global effort to locate missing and unknown heirs to Holocaust survivors. Our travels have taken us to libraries and archives in: Gdańsk and Warsaw, Poland; Vilna and Palanga, Lithuania; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles, California; and, Salt Lake City, Utah.
In an effort to further our expertise in Holocaust research, Heir Hunters International looks forward to attending once again the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies [IAJGS] Conference on Jewish Genealogy. The 35th Conference is scheduled for July 6 – 10, 2015, in Jerusalem.