Author To Share 'A Holocaust Survivor's Story' At Bucks

NEWTOWN, PA — How did an Afro-Caribbean civilian become a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II? How did he survive to tell about it?

Bucks County Community College welcomes Mary Romney-Schaab. The author will share how her father Lionel Romney survived the Holocaust, which she documents in her book, "An Afro-Caribbean in the Nazi Era: From Papiamentu to German."

The event will be moderated by Professor Paula Raimondo and Fabulous Flores, the education director of the Holocaust Awareness Museum in Elkins Park.

Mary Romney-Schaab was born in New York City, but her roots are in the Caribbean island nation of St. Maarten. A retired educator, she spent over 40 years teaching English as a second or foreign language in Madrid, New York, Barcelona, and Connecticut. She has an Ed.M. in Instructional Technology, and an M.A. in the Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), both from Columbia University; an M.A. in Spanish, and a B.A. in Spanish, both from Middlebury College. She is interested in languages, culture, and African Diaspora history.

Flores is a graduate of Holocaust and Genocide Studies from the Richard Stockton University of New Jersey. Before this, she graduated from Penn State University with degrees in Broadcast Journalism and Jewish studies. Her areas of focus include highlighting the experience of the untold stories and victims of mass atrocities. Fabulous’ graduate thesis work, which she has named, “Reading the Silences: The Suppressed Voices of the Black Victims in the Holocaust” aspires to correct this erasure of history. With the completion her graduate degree, she hopes to be able to incorporate the story of black victims into the field of Holocaust studies to provide a holistic study of the Third Reich. Fabulous’ current position is as the Education Director of the Holocaust Awareness Museum in Elkins Park.

The hybrid event takes place from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 9, in the Gallagher Room on the campus at 275 Swamp Road, Newtown 18940, and live on Zoom. To register for the Zoom link, visit https://bit.ly/BCCC-Holocaust.