Jerry Zaks shares how his parents survived multiple concentration camps and death marches, and how they eventually rebuilt their lives in America.
The personal story of Jerry Zaks' parents’ experiences before, during and after WWII, and how they survived the Holocaust.
After retiring in 2016 from a successful career in IT, Jerry Zaks started a quest of researching and documenting the history of his parents’ experiences and hardships growing up in Poland in the 1930’s. Starting with a 2 hour audio interview he conducted with his parents back in 1980, Jerry has spent 6+ years researching his parent's experiences to fill in the details and to tell their story.
Jerry’s presentation is comprised of historical records, actual Nazi documentation and audio clips from the 1980 interview. The presentation is not a history lesson, but instead is a deeply personal story about the human experience of the Holocaust. His presentation, “Bearing Witness for my Family: Surviving the Holocaust”, shows that survival is dependent on your own strength as well as the actions of good people who were resistors to the violence and murder. It starts in 1937, when his parents were 17 and 18 years old and traces their lives from before WWII, how they survived multiple concentration camps and death marches, and how they eventually rebuilt their lives in America.
Register online or by calling the library at (973) 584-2400.
The Roxbury Township Public Library is a municipal library serving the communities of Succasunna, Ledgewood, Landing, Berkshire Valley, Port Morris, and Kenvil. Residents of the township are eligible to a free library card which enables access to 2.8 million items across the Morris Library Alliance including digital books, museum passes and more.