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Holocaust museum curator to speak at Bridgewater College

Vilma Grunwald poses with her sons John (left) and Misa "Frank" circa 1933 in Czechoslovakia.
Dr. Kurt Grunwald
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United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Frank M. Grunwald
Vilma Grunwald poses with her sons John (left) and Misa "Frank" circa 1933 in Czechoslovakia.

On Monday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a retired museum curator will give a lecture at Bridgewater College about one Jewish family's experience during World War II. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.

Judith Cohen formerly served as the chief acquisition curator at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She told WMRA that three unique, original documents in the museum's collection bring the Grunwald family's story to life, eighty years later. The centerpiece, donated by the late Frank Grunwald, is –

Judith Cohen first joined the Holocaust Memorial Museum staff in 1995, eventually becoming the chief acquisitions curator until retiring in 2020.
Judith Cohen
Judith Cohen first joined the Holocaust Memorial Museum staff in 1995, eventually becoming the chief acquisitions curator until retiring in 2020.

JUDITH COHEN: A letter that his mother, Vilma Grunwald … wrote literally minutes before she was taken to the gas chambers. And she wrote this letter and sent it to her husband who was a physician in the camp, and sent it to the hospital wing, and you get a sense of what was going through her head as she knew she was facing the abyss.

The other two documents are a diary written by a child survivor who was imprisoned with Frank, and an interview with Frank's father, Dr. Kurt Grunwald, that was transcribed by an American liberator.

COHEN: And through it we get a sense of what the father was thinking.

Vilma and her older son John were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Kurt and Frank survived the Holocaust, and eventually immigrated to the U.S. Cohen noted that as time passes, the fewer survivors there are left to hear from firsthand.

COHEN: I feel it's really important to keep a tangible proof of people's lives, not just as victims but as people who led full and wonderful lives until this catastrophe hit them.

Cohen's talk will begin at 7 p.m. on Monday, January 27th in Cole Hall at Bridgewater College. The event is sponsored by the Kline Bowman Institute for Peace and Justice. It is free and open to the public.

Randi B. Hagi first joined the WMRA team in 2019 as a freelance reporter. Her work has been featured on NPR and other NPR member stations; in The Harrisonburg Citizen, where she previously served as the assistant editor;The Mennonite; Mennonite World Review; and Eastern Mennonite University's Crossroads magazine.