Program Description: “My Father's Journey from Warsaw Ghetto Smuggler to Italian Partisan Commander” with Mark Wygoda

In 1939 following the German occupation of Poland, Hermann Wygoda, a German-born Polish Jew, began living in open society under the false identity of a Catholic Pole having German ancestry (a Volksdeutscher). Throughout the war he defied the Nazis, first as a Warsaw ghetto smuggler, then as a translator, foreman, and armed courier in Berlin, and finally as a partisan commander in northern Italy. Following the war, after receiving a Bronze Star medal from the Americans for valor in combat, he immigrated to the United States where he started a new life in Chattanooga, TN.

Mark Wygoda is the son of Hermann Wygoda. After retiring as professor emeritus from McNeese State University in Louisiana in 2022, he moved to Durham where he currently is a board member of the Center for Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Education of North Carolina as well as a member of the Center's Holocaust Speakers Bureau. Mark served as the editor of his father's Holocaust memoir, In the Shadow of the Swastika, published by the University of Illinois Press. He has been speaking about his father's life of defiance and resistance during the Holocaust for the past 33 years at venues across the country including Holocaust commemorations, schools, religious organizations, civic clubs, and museums.

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

When: Wednesday, March 24 from 12:30-2:15pm

Cost: JCC Members Free, General Community $18

For assistance registering: registrar@shalomraleigh.org

Click here to register.