Holocaust survivor

Ruth Mendel, who lost more than half of her family in the Holocaust and is one of the few remaining survivors.

Ruth Mendel:

Considered by many to be the start of the Holocaust, the pogrom known as Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), refers to Nov. 9-10, 1938, when German Nazi paramilitary forces attacked Jewish individuals and their property in a widespread campaign of hatred and violence.

The program was named after the smashed glass that was strewn on the streets from the windows of looted and vandalized shops and synagogues. World War II broke out a year later when Germany invaded Poland.

Mendel’s talk is free and open to the public. 

At 93, Mendel, who lives locally, has spent the last decade speaking at schools and synagogues across upstate New York, increasingly so as Holocaust denialism intensifies.

Mendel was born in Luxembourg in 1931 to Polish parents and had a self-described happy childhood until May 10, 1940, the day Nazis attacked her country of 3,500 Jews. Mendel’s grandparents’ dry goods store soon was slapped with the Star of David to keep away patrons, and nine-year-old Ruth was kicked out of school.

Confronting their desperate situation, her family fled to Belgium to secure visas and managed to make their way by train to Paris, Spain and Portugal before getting on a boat to the U.S. Due to very strict American immigration requirements, theirs was one of the last boats that was allowed to leave. Jewish refugees on another transport never made it out.

“Some people wound up in southern France, others in the camps,” Mendel said, “and it was just pure luck that we got out.”