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Breman Museum Hosts Holocaust Speaker Series

A Catholic Holocaust survivor parallels the Warsaw ghetto fires to 9/11

Mention the Holocaust and most people think of the atrocities endured by the six million Jews who were murdered in Nazi death camps during World War II or by those Jews who survived to tell the world their stories.

In fact, estimates of the total number of people killed during Hitler’s reign of terror range from 11 to 17 million, including gypsies, homosexuals, people with disabilities and political and religious opponents, among others.

According to information on www.holocaustforgotten.com, when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, millions of Polish citizens were rounded up and placed in slave labor for German farmers and factories or taken to concentration camps, where many were starved, worked to death or used for scientific experiments. The Jews in Poland were forced inside ghettos, but the non-Jews were made prisoners inside their own country. No one was allowed to leave. The Germans took over ranches, farms and factories. Most healthy citizens were forced into slave labor. Polish men were drafted into the German army. Of the millions of people killed during the Holocaust, six million were Polish citizens -- three million Jews and three million Catholics.

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Mathew Sikorski, now 82 and living near Murphey Candler Park in north DeKalb County, was 10 years old when Hitler’s army invaded Poland. At 15, he and his parents were among thousands transported to a concentration camp, where his father was murdered by lethal injection. Sikorski and his mother were sent to Germany, where they made military blankets in a factory until their liberation in 1945. The family was Catholic and Sikorski still remains active in his church.

On Sunday, Sept.11, Sikorski will speak at the Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum in midtown Atlanta as part of the museum’s ongoing “Bearing Witness” speaker series, held monthly and generally attended by some 100 people of all faiths.

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“To hear a witness is to become a witness,” said Michael Weinroth, the Breman’s coordinator of Holocaust education speakers and liaison to public and private schools. “This generation [of survivors] won’t be around forever,” said Weinroth, explaining why it’s important for people to hear the survivors’ stories.

In addition to the “Bearing Witness” series, survivors speak to tour groups, including some 22,000 schoolchildren who visited the museum in 2010 alone, and to groups at venues other than the museum.

After the war, Sikorski pursued the education he was forced to abandon when the Nazis invaded Poland. Receiving a high school diploma in a displaced persons camp in Germany, he went to college in Spain to study electromechanical engineering and physics. In 1951, he immigrated to the United States, reuniting with his mother in Chicago. He worked as an electromechanical designer of high tension electrical wires, and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He also holds a Ph.D. in physics. He worked for Bell Laboratories in New Jersey from 1959 to 1965, before moving to Atlanta to do research at Georgia Tech. He retired in 1991.

What followed was something Sikorski had never imagined.

He joined a peace and justice committee at his church and spoke about his Holocaust experiences at a church-organized conference. “People asked questions and I thought it would be a good idea to write my thoughts down,” he said.

He took book-writing courses at Oglethorpe University, writing one chapter each week and editing his work after it was critiqued by classmates. He self-published Innocence and Reality about six years ago. A church discussion group about his book led to a speaking engagement at a high school. A Jewish Holocaust survivor learned about Sikorski and invited him to participate in a Holocaust memorial program. Since then, Sikorski has spoken to several groups at the Breman and at other venues arranged by the Breman. Through his association with the Breman, Sikoski met Dr. Morton Waitzman. They came to realize that Waitzman had been one of Sikorski’s liberators in Germany.

When offered several dates to speak at a “Bearing Witness” program, Sikorski specifically requested Sept. 11. He sees a parallel between experiences he lived through during the Holocaust and the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked iconic buildings in New York and Washington.

“I watched the [Warsaw Jewish] ghetto on fire, and when I saw the World Trade Center burn I thought of the ghetto,” Sikorski said. “They are different environments – the burning ghetto and the attack on American buildings,” he added, but the lesson learned from both is the same: “For people to start to love each other, not hate each other.”

“Bearing Witness” will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 11, at the Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum, 1440 Spring Street, NW, at 18th Street, Atlanta, GA 30309. (678) 222-3700. www.thebreman.org. Free to Breman members. Free with museum admission: $12 (adults); $8 (seniors); $6 (students & educators). For group rates (10 or more) call Judi Ayal, (404) 870-1632. Recommended for fifth grade and above. A guided tour of the Holocaust Gallery will follow the talk.

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