Holocaust Survivor and Liberator Reunite at Washington & Jefferson

A survivor of the Holocaust and one of the men responsible for his freedom from the Buchenwald concentration camp will reunite to share their experiences in a public forum at Washington & Jefferson College.

The event will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday in W&J’s Rossin Campus Center Ballroom—just a short drive from the Canon-McMillan area. It is free and open to the public.

Sol Lurie was born April 11, 1930. Taken prisoner by the Nazis as a child, he was held in multiple concentration camps over a span of four years and was liberated from Buchenwald on his fifteenth birthday. Clarence Brockman, a member of the 80th Infantry Division, was among the first Americans who entered the Buchenwald concentration camp, the first of the Nazi concentration camps to be liberated, on April 11, 1945.

Last year, the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation Museum invited Brockman and other members of the Allied forces who helped liberate the prisoners to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day, in Weimar, Germany, where he and Lurie were able to meet. One year later, and a day after Holocaust Remembrance Day 2012, which is also Lurie’s 82^nd birthday, they will meet again at W&J.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring together two men who went through so much in their lives. Our community will benefit greatly by hearing directly from them what it was like there during that time in history,” said Zoe Levenson, senior and president of W&J’s Hillel Society. “We welcome these gentlemen to campus and invite everyone to join us.”

Sponsored by the Hillel Society and Office of Diversity Programs and Multicultural Affairs, the event is free and open to the public.