Sun Rays at Midnight: Holocaust survivor to speak on campus

In 1942 when he was just 20 years of age, Norbert Friedman was interned at a labor camp along with his father, uncles and all the able-bodied men of Wielopole, his grandparents' village in Eastern Poland. Four weeks later, 50 members of his family—including his mother, 10-year-old brother and grandparents—were killed in the Belzec extermination camp.

Friedman weighed just 80 pounds when American soldiers found him in 1945, emaciated and legs swollen, in a barn guarded by the SS, the combat arm of the Nazis' most fanatical organization. He and other prisoners had been marched out of the Ganacker Concentration Camp in Bavaria as a final torment as American forces approached the camp. Now an author and Holocaust survivor, Friedman will share his experiences with the UGA community.

Friedman will speak April 19 at 12:20 p.m. in Room 214 of the University of Georgia's Miller Learning Center. The talk is free and open to the public.

 Friedman's visit to UGA is part of a Franklin College interdisciplinary course "The Holocaust from the Victims' Perspectives" in the department of Germanic and Slavic studies.

Image courtesy of the author.