Holocaust Survivor to Speak in Wallingford

On Sunday, February 11 at 11:30 a.m., Holocaust survivor Steve Adler will be speaking at the Wallingford United Methodist Church (2115 N 42nd St), and the public is welcome:

“Justice is, for me, the crucial issue, the fulcrum about which my story turns. It is the issue that connects my account of Germany to today’s realities.” -Steve Adler
This special program features Holocaust survivor Steve Adler telling his personal story of survival.

Steve was born in Berlin, Germany in 1930 to a middle-class, Jewish family. At age seven, anti-Jewish laws forced Steve to leave his neighborhood school and enter a private Jewish school. Over the next several years, conditions for Jews continued to deteriorate; Steve’s father was jailed during Kristallnacht in November 1938.

In March 1939, Steve was sent by train to Hamburg to join a Kindertransport (children’s transport) going to England by ship. The Kindertransports were organized with British government sanction to give refuge to approximately 10,000 Jewish children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Steve arrived in England knowing only one sentence in English. Unlike most Kindertransport children, Steve was miraculously reunited with his parents and brother in London in late 1940. They immigrated to the United States shortly after.

Steve was a member of the Board of Directors of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust, an international educational and advocacy organization. He lives in North Seattle and is an active member of the Holocaust Center’s Speakers Bureau, sharing his story with thousands of students and other audience members each year. Steve is deeply passionate about using his experiences, and the lessons of history, to implore listeners to use tolerance to combat hatred in their own communities.

Presented by Wallingford United Methodist Church and the Holocaust Center for Humanity. For more information on the Holocaust Center contact (206) 582-3000 or [email protected].

I was interested in bringing my nine year-old son, Zevin, to the talk, but my wife and I were concerned about the grave nature of the subject and how it would be addressed. We’ve discussed how Hitler came to power with him, the themes of Nazi Germany, the general progression of World War II, as well as the Holocaust in broad strokes, but have not gone into the details of the concentration camps. Two years ago, we visited the Dutch Resistance Museum in Amsterdam, which has a great section aimed at teaching children without scarring them.

In light of all that, we wrote to the Holocaust Center to ask them whether it would be alright to bring Zev to this lecture. In response, the Holocaust Center responded “Given your son’s experiences and knowledge, I think it’s appropriate. We suggest grades 5 and up for Steve’s story.  He will discuss his personal experience most, so the rise of Nazi power and his escape to England.  Not so much about camps (which is a topic we reserved for grades 8 and up). To get a feel for it, you may want to check out some video clips of Steve on our website.