Holocaust Survivor To Speak In City
By The Post-Journal Staff
Dr. Helen Fagin, Polish Holocaust survivor, will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 5, in the Carl Cappa Auditorium of the Robert H. Jackson Center. There is no charge for admission.
A former University of Miami literature professor, Dr. Fagin served as chairwoman of U.S. Holocaust M e m o r i a l Museum education committee and helped choose many of the artifacts that fill its exhibits. She later served with Rolland Kidder, Jackson Center executive director, as a member of the National World War II Memorial Committee, which planned the site and design of the memorial in Washington, D.C.
As a child, Dr. Fagin’s parents were killed by the Nazis during World War II while she was imprisoned in a labor camp. After the Russians liberated her from a displaced persons camp in Austria at war’s end, she escaped to the American sector and in l946, at age 24, came to the United States. That personal history drove her campaign to create a 42-foot tall black granite Holocaust monument on Miami Beach. Since moving to Manatee County in l993, Dr. Fagin helped develop the Sarasota-Manatee Holocaust Resource Center.
‘‘Dr. Fagin is a personal friend,’’ Kidder said. ‘‘The story she tells is both fascinating and inspiring. It is a program that should not be missed.’’
Dr. Fagin’s speech will follow a spaghetti dinner in the banquet room of the Jackson Center, where state and countywide winners of an eighth-grade book review contest will be honored.
The dinner is set for 6 p.m. in the Jackson Center banquet room and costs $7. Reservations may be made in advance by calling the Jackson Center, 483-6646. Seating will be limited to 125 people.
Attending the dinner and Dr. Fagin’s presentation will be Jerry Spinelli, a Newbery Award-winning young people’s author, who wrote the book Milkweed on which the book review contest was based. Spinelli will appear before 650 school children Wednesday at the Jackson Center and in videoconferencing rooms throughout the BOCES school district.
‘‘Milkweed tells the story of a 12-year-old orphan on the streets during the Warsaw uprising, which makes Dr. Helen Fagin’s story all the more appropriate to hear on the eve of Jerry Spinelli’s program,’’ Kidder said. The Robert H. Jackson Center is located at 305 E. Fourth St., Jamestown. For more information, call 483-6646 or visit the Web site www.roberthjackson. org.
The program is sponsored by Acu-Rite Inc., Brigiotta’s Farmland Stores, the Chautauqua Region Community Foundation, the Comfort Inn, National Fuel Gas, the Northern Chautauqua Community Foundation, Jamestown Savings Bank, Ronald McDonald Charities, the New York Bar Foundation and the New York Bar Law, Youth and Citizenship Program.