Annual JSU Annual Holocaust Remembrance Program Apr. 5

Dr. Eugen Schoenfeld

The annual Jacksonville State University Remembrance of the Holocaust of World War II will be held Thursday, April 5 at 7:30 p.m. in the Stone Center Theater on campus. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Eugen Schoenfeld of Atlanta, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Dachau.

This year's theme of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum focuses on the children survivors of the Holocaust and their children. Over one and a half million children were killed during the Holocaust. This number represents approximately all of the children currently living in Alabama and Mississippi.

Imagine it is 1943, you are 18-years-old, and your biggest fear is being taken away from your home and put into a concentration camp. For Dr. Eugen Schoenfeld, this fear became a reality. Sochoenfeld will share his experience of internment while at Auschitz, Warsaw, Dachau and Muehldorf Concentration Camps.

Dr. Schoenfeld has been heavily involved in lecturing to civic groups, churches and students about the Holocaust. He says he wants to enlighten others about his experiences so that they become aware of conditions that will lead to hostile inter-religious or inter-ethnic relationships. A former professor and Chair Emeritus of the Georgia State University Sociology Department, he also serves as Educational Director of the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust. Schoenfeld has published many articles in journals such as the Sociological Quarterly, the Review of Religious Research, the Sociological Analysis, and the Sociological Focus.

“I am proud that I was able to re-establish my life in the U.S.A., to have four wonderful daughters, a wife and grandchildren. My other accomplishments, my teaching and writing, are merely extras,” says Schoenfeld.

Schoenfeld tells his story in the book My Reconstructed Life, published by Kennesaw State University.  The story is about life in the camp and what happened afterwards.

“I try to tell people, the Holocaust was not like a Hollywood story, where at the end, the crisis is over and you live happily ever after,” Schoenfeld said at the Kennesaw First-Year Convocation Ceremony. “When you were liberated, this was not the end of the Holocaust. Each of us carried with us the consequence of the Holocaust, and I still do.”

Click here to view more about the book.

Others participating in the event, which is sponsored by JSU's Student Government Association, are from the university community and the community-at-large. The public is invited.

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