Life and Death Under the Nazi Rule

A Rare Evening of True Remembrances

Tuesday, Sept. 4

7:30 pm

Come to the Piedmont Center for the Arts for a rare evening of true remembrances - the fate of 3 families as told by their descendants. 

Tuesday, Sept 4, 2018 7:30 p.m.

General admission: $20, Students 18 yrs and younger : $10

Tickets available at the door, Advance Tickets can be purchased:

Everyone is invited.

Guest speakers will be:

Irene Perbal, resident of Mokelumne Hill, is going to present her early life in Holland under Nazi occupation.  With slides and personal knowledge she will tell of her and her family's harrowing experience hiding Jewish friends in their house "in spite of the Nazi's warning that whomever helped a Jew would be treated like one. In 1942 the Gestapo invaded our house, my father was taken with them (the Jews) to a concentration camp".  Follow her family's endurance while learning history from first hand experience.

Eckhard Fahrenbach was born in 1941 in Berlin, Germany. His talk will feature WWII through the eyes of a child and his family experiences. The Fahrenbach family came to California when Eckhard was eight. Eckhard was put in a second grade class because he did not speak English. His mother was astonished when Eckhard could have an English conversation with his teacher after three months! His German family lost nine members in the war as well as their home. The family has an attitude of gratitude for their many blessings that is admirable. 

Mitchell Schwarzer is an architectural and urban historian -- Professor of Visual Studies at California College of the Arts, San Francisco and Oakland, where he has taught since 1996.  He holds a Ph.D. in the History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture from M.I.T., a Masters in City Planning from Harvard University (1981) and a B.A. in History from Washington University. 

Both of his parents survived the war in German-occupied Poland.  His father lived in the Przemysl ghetto until 1943 from where he was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau and several other camps, before being liberated by the American Army in Bavaria in May of 1945.  His mother survived under false papers in her hometown of Sambor, in a marsh outside the city, and finally in an underground bunker in nearby Drohobycz.  She was liberated by the Soviet Red Army in August of 1944.  They met in Munich in the fall of 1945 and, after medical studies in Heidelberg, immigrated to the United States in September of 1949.