~~ESCAPE TO FREEDOM – You are invited to journey with Temple Beth El’s own Henry Fribourg as he shares his story of being a 12-year old French Jewish boy who with his parents, sister and baby brother, escaped from occupied Europe in January 1942, one month after Pearl Harbor. In his talk, he will review the history of Germany in the 20th century and the events leading to the Dritte (Third) Reich and the Holocaust. He will then talk about his family’s experiences, such as his surviving three machine-gun strafing by a German fighter pilot, the walk of his soldier father most of the way across France, and the flight of his pregnant mother and sister with him to escape the German Panzers during the invasion of France in 1940. He will describe the family’s life in Vichy France and North Africa, his expulsion from school for being Jewish; the inspection of the neutral ship across the Atlantic by a U-boat crew, his learning Spanish and English the hard way; the murder of his grandparents; the life his family created in the US after WW II – and document many of these happenings with salvaged documents. The tale is a story of fortuitous luck and dogged determination to survive and create a fulfilling new life in America. Please join us as Henry reminds us to remember the events in Europe from 1933 to 1945 – not forget!

When: Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
(during Religious School)
Where: Temple Beth El Social Hall