Our original speaker, Jack Adler, suffered from a recent fall. We wish him a speedy and full recovery. Risa Stillman will be taking his place this evening.
5TH NIGHT PHOENIX HOLOCAUST ASSOCIATION
Our original speaker, Jack Adler, suffered from a recent fall. We wish him a speedy and full recovery. Risa Stillman will be taking his place this evening. Rise was the fourth child in a family of six children. She was born in Velke Komyaty, Czechoslovakia. In 1942, Rise and her cousins were taken by SS officers to a ghetto. Rise would not see most of her immediate family again. In 1944, Rise and her family were packed into cattle cars. When the train stopped at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, she was separated from her relatives and never saw them again. At Auschwitz, her hair was shorn, a number was tattooed on her arm, and she was given a prison uniform. Shortly afterwards she was selected to dig trenches in Krakow. In October 1944, she was taken to Bergen Belsen to work in a potato field, where taking a potato could mean death. One of Rise’s last assignments was working in an underground munitions factory in a salt mine. After liberation in May 1945, Rise was taken to Sweden to recuperate. In 1948, she was able to emigrate to the U.S., where she moved to Ohio, married an American, and had a son. After her husband died, Rise moved to Arizona to be closer to her son. It is only recently that Rise has begun to tell her story of survival during the Holocaust. We want to thank Rise for sharing her story with our community!
