March 22, 2016

Contact Rick Kyte at 608-796-3704 or rlkyte@viterbo.edu

HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR MAGDA HERZBERGER TO SPEAK AT VITERBO UNIVERSITY APRIL 7

LA CROSSE, Wis. – Holocaust survivor Magda Herzberger will share her harrowing and incredible story at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 7 in the Viterbo University Fine Arts Center Main Theatre.

Magda Mozes Herzberger was born Feb. 20, 1926, in Cluj, Romania. The members of the Mozes family, along with thousands of other Jews, were forced into the Cluj Ghetto. In May 1944, Magda and her family were sent to Auschwitz, where most of them perished.

Herzberger survived three death camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, and Breman. Left to die on a pile of corpses in Bergen-Belsen, she was rescued by a British soldier in April 1945. Her mother would also survive the war, living until the age of 93.

Magda Mozes would marry Eugene Herzberger in 1946. In 1957, after nine years in Israel, the Herzbergers immigrated to the U.S. They and their two children settled in Monroe, Wisconsin, where Eugene practiced medicine for 20 years. The Herzbergers moved to Dubuque, Iowa, in 1976 and to Arizona in 1994.

Magda Herzberger has written and spoken extensively about her experiences. She has published two memoirs, Eyewitness to Holocaust and Survival, and several volumes of poetry and fiction.

 She is a former marathon runner, skier, and mountain climber. Today her goals are to instill a love for poetry in the hearts of people through her work, to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive through the presentations of her experiences in the Nazi death camps, and to show the beauty of life through her writings and music. She and her husband have a daughter, son, two grandchildren, and one great grandchild.

This presentation is free and open to the public and is part of the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership Spring Lecture Series. It is being held in conjunction with Viterbo’s annual Teaching the Holocaust Workshop for educators.

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