Yom HaShoah speaker was rescued by Muslim family | Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle

Yom HaShoah speaker was rescued by Muslim family 

 

Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day will be marked virtually in Milwaukee on Sunday, April 11, 3 p.m.  

The event is an opportunity to stand with the Milwaukee community in memorial to the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. and in remembrance of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and all resistance, according to organizers.  

Alfred Al Munzer

“This annual Yom HaShoah ceremony brings us together to remember and mourn the people and communities destroyed in the Shoah, to recognize those who resisted and fought, and to honor the survivors and preserve their legacy for future generations,” said Samantha Abramson, director of the Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center of Milwaukee Jewish Federation. 

Dr. Alfred Munzer will speak at the event. Munzer is a recently retired physician specializing in diseases of the lung who was director of the Pulmonary Medicine Department at Washington Adventist Hospital in Maryland.  

Munzer was born in the Netherlands during World War II and lost his father and two sisters in the Holocaust. He spent the first four years of his life hidden from the Nazi occupiers with an Indonesian family residing in The Hague. He and his mother immigrated to the United States in 1958. For the past eight years he has been a volunteer at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum translating diaries from Dutch into English for a five-volume series called Jewish Responses to Persecution and as a docent for the museum’s permanent and special exhibitions. 

“In keeping with this year’s theme of strength in community, Dr. Munzer’s story of survival transcends religion, race, and gender as we are captivated by the heroic rescue of a young Jewish boy by an Indonesian, Muslim family in the Netherlands,” Abramson said.  

For those who would like to pick up a Yahrzeit candle to light at home for Yom HaShoah, curbside pick-up will be available at the west entrance of the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, on Thursday, April 8, from 4:30-5:30 p.m., and Sunday, April 11, from noon-1 p.m. Those interested in picking up a candle – or having a candle delivered if they are unable to drive – should complete a form online at MilwaukeeJewish.org/Yamim when they register for the event.