The Edwin S. Soforenko Foundation and Roger Williams University Hillel will present a talk with Rabbi Baruch G. Goldstein, a survivor of Auschwitz, at 4:30 p.m. in Room 157 of the University’s Feinstein College of Arts and Sciences building. The presentation is titled: “For Decades I Was Silent: A Holocaust Survivor’s Journey Back to Faith.”
Baruch Goldstein grew up in the Jewish community of Mlawa, a town on the border between Poland and Germany, in the 1920s and 1930s. Then Hitler came to power, and by 1939, his life, the lives of his family members, and the fate of his Jewish neighbors were in the hands of the Nazis. By 1942, 19-year old Goldstein was being transported to the concentration and death camp Auschwitz. Separated from his family – their fate he would not learn until after the war – he survived two and half years in the infamous camp.
As the Allies advanced eastward across Europe in the spring of 1945, the Nazi leadership of Auschwitz forced those internees who could walk to proceed on a death march away from liberators. But somehow Goldstein survived this ordeal; yet his immediate and extended family did not, dying at the hands of the Nazis.
After the war, Goldstein moved from refugee camp to refugee camp, arriving at last in Italy. Through distant relatives in the U.S., he made his way to this country as a yeshiva student, became a rabbi, had a family of his own, and eventually served synagogues in Massachusetts.
A reception will follow the presentation, and all are welcome.
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