Interfaith CincinnatiInterfaith Cincinnati
The Holocaust Speaker Series, held each Wednesday at 11:00 am, features Holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors sharing stories of life before, during, and after the Holocaust. Join us on Wednesday, December 21st at 11:00 am via Zoom with Josie Ziegler.
Josie tells the stories of her grandparents’ journeys from the German towns of Cologne (Koln) and Landsberg am Lech to the USA. At 16 years old, Ellen (Josie’s grandmother) escaped in 1938 via the Kindertransport through the support of her parents. She was first sent to London to stay with her uncle and in 1939 took a Liberty ship to join her brother in NYC. She was able to keep in touch with her parents until 1940 when communications stopped, and she was never to hear from them again. Berthold (Josie’s grandfather), about age 23, was sent to the USA with his older brother in 1938 while his parents and two younger siblings stayed behind (they later came to the USA in 1939). In the summer of 2022, Josie traveled to Landsberg to visit the family’s former home, store, and town where her grandfather grew up. Josie recently moved to Cincinnati after graduating optometry school. She is a Third-Generation speaker who has been gathering research in an effort to retrace her grandparents’ experiences through Europe.
Generously sponsored by Margaret and Michael Valentine and presented in partnership with the Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center and Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage.