Holocaust Author Featured at MJCCA’s Yom Hashoah Ceremony
On Sunday, the Marcus JCC, invites the community to a Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) commemoration featuring the co-author of a book about Holocaust survival.
On Sunday, the Marcus JCC, invites the community to a Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) commemoration featuring the co-author of a book about Holocaust survival.
Pamela Sampson co-authored “No Reply: A Jewish Child Aboard the MS St. Louis and the Ordeal That Followed” with the Holocaust survivor whose story the book recounts, Henry Gallant. The topic is especially meaningful because 2019 is the 80th anniversary of the voyage of the MS St. Louis.
The book tells the story of Henry’s narrow escape from the Nazis. Henry was born on October 30, 1928, in Berlin. After the violence of the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938, Henry’s parents made the decision to leave Germany. They bought tickets for ocean passage aboard the MS St. Louis, which sailed from Germany on May 13, 1939.
The ship, with more than 900 Jewish refugees, was denied permission to land in Cuba, the United States and Canada. The passengers were forced to return to Europe, where many fell into the hands of the Nazis. Henry and his mother embarked on a harrowing journey through France, running and hiding from the Nazis and their collaborators until they managed a narrow escape to neutral Switzerland. Henry’s father was detained in a French internment camp for two years until he was deported in August 1942 to Auschwitz, where he died.
Sampson is an editor and former foreign correspondent for The Associated Press, one of the world’s largest news agencies. Her journalistic work has taken her to countries throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and many other publications. “No Reply” is her first book. She lives in Sandy Springs with her son, Joshua.
Sunday’s free ceremony will be held from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. rain or shine at the MJCCA’s Besser Holocaust Memorial Garden, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody, one of the foremost memorials of its kind in the Southeast.
For more information, visit atlantajcc.org/yomhashoah or call 678-812-4161.
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