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Finding My Father’s Auschwitz File

“On October 3rd 2011 at 8:30 AM, during the High Holy Days of the Jewish New Year, I walked into Block 24 at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oswiecim, Poland.”

So begins Dr. Allen Hershkowitz‘s memoir of searching for his father’s history at the hands of the Nazis in the concentration camps.

Dr. Hershkowitz learned little from his parents about their past. It was not until he uncovered his father’s Auschwitz file that he recognized how far from understanding their history he was. His father’s life, as well as the life of his mother, was a miraculous drama. In October 2011, with the hundredth anniversary of his father’s birth approaching — he was born December 12, 1912 — Hershkowitz decided it was time to visit Auschwitz. He took a detour on his way home from Portugal for the High Holy Days and finally went to Auschwitz and found that his father’s file had miraculous survived the Nazis’ burning of inmate records before they abandoned the camp.

On International Holocaust Day of Remembrance, the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, Dr. Hershkowitz and special guests including Gina Sharpe, co-founder and former Guiding Teacher of the New York Insight Meditation Center, actress Zelda Adams, Bishop Victor A. Brown, Senior Pastor of Mt. Sinai United Christian Church in Staten Island, and Holocaust survivor Ann Jaffe will read from his memoir Finding My Father’s Auschwitz File.

After the reading, Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, Executive Vice President of the New York Board of Rabbis, will moderate an interfaith conversation about the lasting impact of the Holocaust, including current awareness and prevention of genocide with Dr. Hershkowitz, Ms. Jaffe, Ms. Sharpe, and Imam Dr. Tahir Kukaj, Vice President of the Albanian Islamic Cultural Center in Staten Island. Fr. Brian McWeeney, Director of the Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs at Archdiocese of New York, will open the program on behalf of The Sheen Center.

Copies of the book will be available for sale at the event. You can also purchase online or at Shakespeare & Co. located at 939 Lexington Avenue.











When: Sun., Jan. 27, 2019 at 3:00 pm
Where: Sheen Center for Thought & Culture
18 Bleecker St.
212-925-2812
Price: $25
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“On October 3rd 2011 at 8:30 AM, during the High Holy Days of the Jewish New Year, I walked into Block 24 at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oswiecim, Poland.”

So begins Dr. Allen Hershkowitz‘s memoir of searching for his father’s history at the hands of the Nazis in the concentration camps.

Dr. Hershkowitz learned little from his parents about their past. It was not until he uncovered his father’s Auschwitz file that he recognized how far from understanding their history he was. His father’s life, as well as the life of his mother, was a miraculous drama. In October 2011, with the hundredth anniversary of his father’s birth approaching — he was born December 12, 1912 — Hershkowitz decided it was time to visit Auschwitz. He took a detour on his way home from Portugal for the High Holy Days and finally went to Auschwitz and found that his father’s file had miraculous survived the Nazis’ burning of inmate records before they abandoned the camp.

On International Holocaust Day of Remembrance, the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, Dr. Hershkowitz and special guests including Gina Sharpe, co-founder and former Guiding Teacher of the New York Insight Meditation Center, actress Zelda Adams, Bishop Victor A. Brown, Senior Pastor of Mt. Sinai United Christian Church in Staten Island, and Holocaust survivor Ann Jaffe will read from his memoir Finding My Father’s Auschwitz File.

After the reading, Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, Executive Vice President of the New York Board of Rabbis, will moderate an interfaith conversation about the lasting impact of the Holocaust, including current awareness and prevention of genocide with Dr. Hershkowitz, Ms. Jaffe, Ms. Sharpe, and Imam Dr. Tahir Kukaj, Vice President of the Albanian Islamic Cultural Center in Staten Island. Fr. Brian McWeeney, Director of the Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs at Archdiocese of New York, will open the program on behalf of The Sheen Center.

Copies of the book will be available for sale at the event. You can also purchase online or at Shakespeare & Co. located at 939 Lexington Avenue.

Buy tickets/get more info now