INTRODUCTION OF KEYNOTE SPEAKER BY RABBI STERN

We were children during the Holocaust. We survived by hiding our Jewish identity in convents, orphanages, with strangers and on the run. We hid in haylofts, forests, basements and sewers. We were in ghettos and concentration camps. We were left to fend for ourselves, wandering in search of food and shelter. We were the lucky ones, one of the 10 percent out of the 1/2 million who survived.

Some of us were luckier than others. We were hidden by a handful of righteous gentiles who knew instinctively that it was morally and ethically wrong to treat people inhumanely.

Ursula Korn Selig, our keynote speaker, is one of those lucky ones who are here to tell her story. She was born in Germany but left to Italy in 1935 when she was six years old. In 1938, when Mussolini signed the friendship pact with Hitler, Italy enacted the racial laws and Jewish children could no longer go to school. In 1939, when the war broke out, she was arrested, handcuffed and put on a train to Umbria where her mother aunt, cousin were already imprisoned.

In 1941, she went to the local seminary to see the Rector, Don Beniamino Schivo Galieo, now Monsignor, about the plight of the Jews. In 1943, when Italy signed a separate peace treaty with the Allies and Italy was occupied by the Germans she was arrested and taken to Gestapo Headquarters in Umbria. As the prison was full, she returned to Citte di Castello and the Monsignor and the Bishop planned her escape. A few days later, she was hidden up in the mountains in a Salesian retreat, and so she was saved by these righteous people.

Ursula now volunteers her time for the Hidden Child Foundation (click to found out more information), an arm of the Anti Defamation League, to let others know that in the midst of massive barbarity, a few good people remembered their humanity.

We are pleased to invite her to our Yom Hashoah Commemoration