Sonja Geismar and Joan Halperin Have Joined the Speakers Bureau of the HHREC of White Plains
The Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center (HHREC) of White Plains, NY has announced Sonja Geismar and Joan Halperin have joined their Speakers Bureau.
Sonja Maier Geismar was born on February 16, 1935, and lived in a small town near the city of Karlsruhe in southwest Germany. As a four-year-old, she witnessed Nazis barging into their home on Kristallnacht, November 9, 1939, to destroy property. Sonja and her mother were frightened. When Sonja saw that her father’s photograph had been torn, she thought he had died. In truth, her father had been taken away earlier that day to the concentration camp, Dachau, near Munich. At Dachau, he was humiliated and beaten until he was released after five weeks.
On May 13, 1939, Sonja with her parents, paternal grandparents, and two great aunts boarded the ocean liner St. Louis for Havana, Cuba, considered to be a safe haven until their quota numbers would be called to enable them to enter the United States, but they were not permitted to disembark and were forced to return to Europe, where the governments of Great Britain, France, Belgium, and The Netherlands agreed to divide the returning refugees among the four countries. Fortunately, the Maiers were assigned to Great Britain and after seven months they arrived in New York City in February 1940.
As a HHREC Survivor Speaker, Sonja shares her story of how she and members of her family were able to disembark in Great Britain and eventually arrive in New York.
Joan Arnay Halperin is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, with a BA in Speech and Drama. She earned a Master of Arts Degree in TESOL and devoted many years to teaching, grant writing, and teacher training at various New York City Public Schools.
In 2012, while doing research for her book My Sister’s Eyes: a Family Chronicle of Rescue and Loss During World War II, Joan learned of her family’s debt to the Holocaust rescuer Aristides de Sousa Mendes the Portuguese Consul General in Bordeaux, France.
In recent years Joan has dedicated her energies to sharing the story of her family’s 1241-day journey on the road to freedom with teachers and students at the elementary through university level. As a HHREC GenerationsForward Speaker, Joan shares excerpts from the testimony her mother Helene Arnay gave on January 1, 1989.
Visit HHRECNY.org for more information about Sonja Geismar, Joan Halperin, and other HHREC speakers.
About The Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center
The Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center (HHREC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in White Plains New York that serves schools, synagogues, colleges, churches, and civic centers in Westchester and the greater Hudson Valley area. The HHREC’s Mission is to enhance the teaching and learning of the lessons of the Holocaust and the right of all people to be treated with dignity and respect. HHREC works with teachers and students to help schools fulfill the New York State mandate that the Holocaust and other human rights abuses be included in their curriculum. Since 1994, the HHREC has brought the lessons of the Holocaust, genocide, and human rights violations to more than 3,000 teachers, and through them to thousands of students. Visit https://hhrecny.org/, call 914-696-0738, or email info@hhrecny.org for more information.