The 17th annual Holocaust Remembrance program was held on Wednesday, June 9, 2010, at 11:30 am. The theme for this year's program was Lessons Learned. Our speakers were Robert K. Wagemann, Eva Mozes Kor, and Helmuth Caspar von Moltke.
| ¤ |
 Robert K. Wagemann was born in 1937 in Mannheim, Germany. Mr. Wagemann, brought up as a Jehovah's Witness in Germany, was classified as handicapped. His mother was a Jehovah's Witness who was arrested and briefly incarcerated in 1937 due to her religion. She was pregnant at the time with Robert, and they believe that the stress and limited prenatal care contributed to Robert's breech birth and handicap. Twice Robert was targeted for extermination, but his mother hid him after the second attempt in his grandparents' house after she overheard doctors talking about giving Robert a lethal injection after lunch. He suffered discrimination both as a Jehovah's Witness and as a handicapped individual while growing up in Nazi Germany. He now lives in Fairfield, New Jersey. |
| ¤ |
 Eva Mozes Kor and her twin sister Miriam were born in 1934 in northern Romania. In 1944, Nazis transported her immediate family to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Because Eva and Miriam were twins, Dr. Mengele selected them to remain alive for experiments. The rest of their family were never heard of again and are believed to have been murdered in the gas chambers. Eva and Miriam remained in Auschwitz for nine months, enduring experimentation such as being injected with potentially lethal strains of bacteria (and not given treatment). After returning to Romania and then moving to Israel, Eva Kor settled down in Terre Haute, Indiana where she lives with her husband. There she created the C.A.N.D.L.E.S Museum (Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiment Survivors). The museum is dedicated to education about the Holocaust and operates under the mission to “eliminate hatred and prejudice from our world.” |
| ¤ |
|
| ¤ |
 Caroline Lyders, our moderator, is the 11 pm weeknight anchor and reporter for ABC7/WJLA-TV. She joined the WJLA staff in March, 2008 after spending three years as an anchor and reporter at WISN-TV in Milwaukee. Prior to that, Caroline was a reporter at WBNS-TV in Columbus, Ohio, and WBTW-TV in Florence/Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Caroline studied philosophy and music at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She also has a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York. She first became passionate about journalism as a visiting student at Oxford University, assigned to interview former Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. That inspired both her choice of career and her love of travel, which has taken her to countries including Egypt, Israel and Russia. |
| ¤ |
 This year, our musical selections will be provided by the Alexandria Kleztet, an exciting and innovative klezmer band formed in 1998, and based in the Washington/Baltimore region. Their take on this Eastern-European/Jewish musical tradition combines it with diverse influences from other genres, including jazz, classical, worldbeat, and rock music, resulting in a unique sound that is anything but traditional. More information is available here. |
| ¤ |
 Romanian Ambassador Adrian Cosmin Vierita and  a representative of German Ambassador Klaus Scharioth were in attendance. |
| ¤ |
| On May 7, 2010, John Berry, Director of the Office of Personnel Management sent a memo to the Chief Human Capital Officers of federal agencies encouraging them to continue to support the Holocaust Remembrance program, and to allow “a reasonable amount of time for your employees to attend the program this year.” The letter can be viewed or downloaded in PDF format by clicking here. We appreciate the official recognition provided by Director Berry.
A larger version of the poster shown above, including a second page with some of the program information, can be viewed or downloaded in PDF format by clicking here. |
| ¤ |
| This program is free, and open to the public. Federal employees and retired employees are especially encouraged to attend. |
| ¤ |
Sponsoring Agencies
The 27 federal agencies listed here provide financial and logistical support for the Holocaust Remembrance program:
Programs and other information from several previous years are available.
Disclaimer (the fine print): Although the Holocaust Remembrance program is sponsored, and funded, by the federal agencies listed above, the site itself has been privately created and funded to support the Inter-agency Organizing Committee. Since the site receives no funding from any government agency, and the site is not subject to review by any government agency, information provided on the site should not be considered as official.
The site was created by Bill Landau. Click here for more information on web hosting and email services. Web hosting and email services for holocaustremembrance.org are contributed by Bill Landau.
Helmuth Caspar von Moltke was born in 1937 in Bonn, Germany. In 1947, two years after World War II ended, their mother moved with Helmuth and his younger brother, Konrad, to Cape Town, South Africa where Helmuth and Konrad attended high school. Von Moltke received a law degree from Oxford University in England and was admitted to the English bar. He worked for a German industrial company from 1961 to 1993, during which time he lived in Germany, Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States. Mr. von Moltke retired in New York in 1993. Since then, he has worked on various ventures. Helmuth Caspar von Moltke became a United States resident in 1986 and currently lives in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Helmuth Caspar von Moltke's parents were Helmuth James Graf von Moltke (1907-1945) and Freya Deichmann von Moltke (1911-2010). They were major participants in the German resistance movement against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945. The couple married in 1931, and both obtained law degrees. Helmuth James and Freya von Moltke led the Kreisau Circle resistance group from their estate in southeast Germany (now part of Poland). The Kreisau Circle consisted of German intellectuals and political leaders who participated in discussions that dealt with plans for a German government after Hitler, support for Hitler's assassination, and handling war crimes. In addition, Helmuth James offered his expertise from his law practice in Berlin to Jewish families trying to salvage their belongings or to leave the country. On January 23, 1945, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke was hanged after a German Nazi court trial sentenced him to death. In 1990, von Moltke's Letters to Freya: 1939-1945 was published in the United States through the efforts of Freya. Freya von Moltke died on January 1, 2010 in Norwich, Vermont.