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Kristallnacht Observance

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  Dinner with our Speaker
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  Dinner with our Speaker
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  Dinner with our Speaker
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  Speaker Marion Blumenthal Lazan with University President & Mrs Mitchell
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  Lighting the yizkor candles
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  Lighting the yizkor candles
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  Our Speaker: Marion Blumenthal Lazan
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  Our Speaker's Memoir

Marion Blumenthal Lazan's unforgettable memoir recalls the devastating years that shaped her childhood.

Following Hitler's rise to power, the Blumenthal family -- father, mother, Marion, and her brother, Albert -- were trapped in Nazi Germany. They managed eventually to get to Holland, but soon thereafter it was occupied by the Nazis. For the next six and a half years the Blumenthals were forced to live in refugee, transit, and prison camps that included Westerbork in Holland and the notorious Bergen-Belsen in Germany. Though they all survived the camps, Walter Blumenthal, the father, succumbed to typhus just after liberation.

It took three more years of struggle and waiting before Marion, Albert, and their mother at last obtained the necessary papers and boarded ship for the United States. Their story is one of horror and hardship, but it is also a story of courage, hope, and the will to survive.