MATTOON — Holocaust survivor Bill Gingold of Champaign is scheduled to speak Monday, March 18, at the Mattoon Public Library in conjunction with the ongoing "Courage to Remember" traveling exhibit at the Cross County Mall.
The presentation is set for 6 p.m. at the library, 1600 Charleston Ave.
Gingold's talk will be free and open to the public.
The Champaign-Urbana Jewish Federation, of which Gingold is a member, reported that he was born on Sept. 20, 1939, at a hospital in Warsaw, Poland that was bombed and destroyed the next day by Nazi Germany. He and his family were subsequently confined in the Warsaw Ghetto.
In January 1942, the Gingolds escaped across the Russian border. They, along with other Jewish people, were then transported to a Siberian lumber camp. The family was able to leave the camp in November 1942 and eventually ended up in Kazakhstan.
Following Germany's surrender, the Gingolds entered the U.S. sector of Berlin in September 1945. The family was sent in May 1946 to the Föehrenwald Displaced Persons Camp, where they spent the next six years. They emigrated to the U.S. in May 1951 and resettled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The federation's Holocaust Education Center has brought the "Courage to Remember" exhibit to the mall . The exhibit will be open from 4-7 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 1-4 p.m. Sunday through March 29. Field trips can be arranged at 217-369-5039 or hec@cujf.org .
Photos: Preserving the silent witnesses to the Holocaust
A worker holds a shoe that belonged to a child victim of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau at the conservation laboratory on the grounds of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday, May 10. Museum workers describe the children's shoes as one of the most emotional testaments of the crimes carried out at Auschwitz, where Nazi German forces murdered 1.1 million people during World War II.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
A worker examines a shoe that belonged to a child victim of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau at the conservation laboratory on the grounds of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday, May 10. German forces in World War II destroyed evidence of their atrocities at Treblinka and other camps, but they failed to do so entirely at the enormous site of Auschwitz as they fled the approaching Soviet forces in chaos toward the war's end.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
A shoe that belonged to a child victim of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau is scanned at the conservation laboratory on the grounds of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday, May 10. Most of the victims were Jews killed in dictator Adolf Hitler's attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
Miroslaw Maciaszczyk, a conservation specialist, takes a photo of a shoe that belonged to a child victim of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau at the conservation laboratory on the grounds of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday, May 10. Most of the shoes are single objects. One pair still bound by shoelaces is a rarity.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
Elzbieta Cajzer, head of the museum's collections department, shows a collection of shoes that belonged to child victims of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau at the conservation laboratory on the grounds of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, on May 10. A two-year effort has been launched in 2023 to preserve 8,000 children’s shoes at the former concentration and extermination camp where German forces murdered 1.1 million people during World War II.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
A worker rubs away dust on a shoe that belonged to a child victim of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau at the conservation laboratory on the grounds of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday, May 10. The museum is able to conserve about 100 shoes a week, and has processed 400 since the project began last month. The aim is not to restore them to their original state but to render them as close to how they were found at war's end as possible.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
A worker uses a scalpel to scrape away rust from the eyelets of a shoe that belonged to a child victim of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau at the conservation laboratory on the grounds of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday, May 10.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
People visit one of the barracks displaying shoes collected from the prisoners of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday, May 10. Elżbieta Cajzer, head of the collections, described the shoes as powerful testimony because the huge heaps of shoes that remain give some idea of the enormous scale of the crimes, even though what is left is only a fraction of what was.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
Elzbieta Cajzer, head of the museum's collections department, shows a shoe that belonged to Vera Vohryzkova, a child victim of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau at the conservation laboratory on the grounds of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday, May 10. Vera was born Jan. 11, 1939, into a Jewish Czech family and was sent to Auschwitz in a transport from the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1943 with her mother and brother. Her father Max Vohryzek was sent in a separate transport. They all perished.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
A worker rubs away dust on a shoe that belonged to a child victim of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau at the conservation laboratory on the grounds of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday, May 10.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
Miroslaw Maciaszczyk, a conservation specialist, scans a shoe that belonged to a child victim of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau at the conservation laboratory on the grounds of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday, May 10.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
Teenagers visit the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday, May 10.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
Workers examine shoes that belonged to child victims of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau at the conservation laboratory on the grounds of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
A woman looks at an exhibition displaying the shoes of child victims of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday, May 10.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
Get local news delivered to your inbox!
Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter.