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Tom Breslauer will speak about his experience in the Holocaust 11 a.m. tomorrow at the Hillel House.
Free pizza will be served at the event, sponsored by the Hillel Society.
Robert Weiner, Jewish chaplain and Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Professor of History, believes that Breslauer has a full story to tell and does so very well.
“His memory is wonderful and he makes a fine presentation,” he says. “To have been old enough to remember and really understand what was happening in the 1930s, you have to be in your 80s and in the next decade we will see the disappearance of these immediate sources.”
Weiner hopes that those who attend gain a greater sensitivity for those who went through this tragedy and become sensitized to people who go through similar tragedies.
Spreading a message of non-violence and respect, Breslauer has given many lectures to students about his Holocaust experiences.
Breslauer was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1916. In 1938 he was 22 and working in his uncle’s shoe factory when two Waffen-SS soldiers took him and 40 other Jewish neighbors away. He was imprisoned at Dachau Concentration Camp and forced to daily marching and calisthenics.
In March 1939, Breslauer was released from Dachau. With the necessary papers that his mother had secured, he immigrated to the New York City. He became an American citizen and married another German emigrant. After fighting for the United States in World War II, Breslauer relocated to Stroudsburg, Pa. and founded his own manufacturing company.
He eventually sold his company and graduated from New York University with a bachelor’s degree in humanities. He is president of Temple Israel in Stroud Township and past president of the B’nai B’rith Lodge and the American Cancer Society. He also serves on boards for the YMCA, Laurel Manor Nursing Home, Jacob Stroud Corporation, Pocono Health Communities Alliance, and Junior Achievement. He is a counselor and financial secretary for the Senior Corps of Retired Executives and a member of the Monroe County Board of Assessment Appeals.