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Reno
Gazette Journal - Voices
February 12, 1995
Witnesses
of Holocaust Horror Gather in Reno
by Rollan Melton
Certain
misguided souls would have us believe there was never
a World War II Holocaust. That Hitler was innocent of
butchering millions of Jews. That "Schindler's
List" is pure fantasy. But the naysayers are the
Big Lie. Many still with us were victims, or lost family
members, or witnessed first-hand the horrors in 1939-45
Europe. Many of those people live in Greater Reno-Sparks.
On Thursday, three will speak at a Reno program, "Remembering
for the Future: Stories of Holocaust Survivors and Liberators."
The event is put on by the Center for Holocaust,
Genocide & Peace Studies at the University of
Nevada, Reno, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary
of the liberation of Europe. Founding director Viktoria
Hertling has taken the lead in arranging the program.
Funding is by UNR and private contributors.
Hertling was born in Germany in 1945, the year peace
returned. The Holocaust scholar has been the driving
force in the founding of the campus Holocaust Center.
She also is the producer of a video documentary that
will focus on a number of Holocaust survivors and liberators
who live in the Reno area. It airs on KNPB- TV Channel
5 in May.
Thursday speakers:
· Willem Houwink: Holland native
who fought with the Dutch underground against Nazis
after the enemy occupation. Houwink, betrayed by a countryman,
spent three years in concentration camps; he is a retired
UNR economics professor.
· Ann Milhollan: Born in Frankfurt, Germany,
in 1916, she survived in the emerging Hitler regime.
In a harrowing 1939 journey, she fled Germany to England.
Seven in her family perished in Nazi concentration camps.
She has lived in Reno since 1946 and had a 35-year career
as a dealer at the Palace Club, the Mapes Hotel and
Harolds Club.
· Jud Allen: A U.S. Army officer who survived
the Battle of the Bulge, only to wind up coordinating
activities of war correspondents during the liberation
of the infamous Buchenwald death camp. "There was
no way to prepare for what we experienced there. the
odor of dead and living, moans of the dying, and naked
bodies, stacked like wood," he says, Allen managed
the Greater Reno Chamber of Commerce (1959-1982), and
then was a member of the Reno City Council. He is a
member of the Nevada Ethics Commission.
"Remembering the Future" will be held in the
ASUN auditorium of UNR's Jot Travis Student Union from
7 to 9 p.m. Seating starts at 6:30 p.m.
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