Holocaust Survivor To Speak At Jackson Center

On Saturday, Dec. 1, Holocaust survivor Joe Diamond will speak at 3 p.m. in the Carl Cappa Theater of the Robert H. Jackson Center. 

Rabbi Allen Podet of Congregation Hesed Abraham and Gregory Peterson, Jackson Center board chairman, will also speak at the event. A question and answer session will follow their presentation. The event is hosted by Congregation Hesed Abraham and is open to the public free of charge. Light refreshments will be served following the presentation.

Diamond, a representative of the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo, was born in 1929 in a small multi-cultural community in the Carpathian region of Czechoslovakia. Following World War I, he and other Jews living there became the target of racial slurs and harsh treatment as Germany began to rebuild. The situation worsened under Hitler’s dictatorship, and in 1944, Diamond and his family were taken prisoner and transported by train, along with 600 others from their town, to a temporary camp. A month later Diamond and his family were transferred to Auschwitz, where his mother and brother died in the gas chambers shortly after their arrival. Diamond and his father survived the torture and conditions and eventually reunited in their hometown. 



Diamond left Europe in 1948 for the United States, where he later served in the U.S. Army and built a new life for himself and a family — the next generation of Jewish children. 



Rabbi Podet, who serves the Congregation Hesed Abraham, holds doctorates in Hebrew Literature and Near East History. He is a professor in the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department of the State University at Buffalo. He publishes extensively and lectures widely across the United States. 



Peterson is a partner in the law firm of Phillips Lytle LLP. He received his juris doctor from Dickinson School of Law in Carlisle, Pa., and is admitted to practice in the U.S. Supreme Court, New York and Pennsylvania. He is a member of the American Bar and sits on the board of many organizations. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the ‘‘Service to Mankind Award’’ presented to him by the Jamestown Sertoma Club.

The Post-Journal

Jamestown, N.Y.

November 25, 2007

Vol. 181, No. 156

Sec. B, Page 1