Schenectady, N.Y. (March 23, 1998) – Ernest Nives, a Holocaust survivor, will discuss “Personal Remembrances of the Holocaust” on Monday, March 30, at 7 p.m. in the Reamer Campus Center Auditorium at Union College.
The event also will include a screening and discussion of the film Au Revoir, Les Enfants (Goodbye Children) by the late Louis Malle.
The event — part of Lessons for Humanity, a series of Holocaust remembrance events at Union College — is free and open to the public.
Nives, born in Vienna in 1925, was arrested in 1942 with his mother in central France. Sent by the Vichy police to the regional assembly camp in Montluçon, they were transferred to Drancy concentration camp and deported a month later. Nives' father, Bernard, was imprisoned in Dachau and Buchenwald in 1938 and 1939 before seeking refuge with his family in France. His brother, Fred, emigrated to the U.S. in 1940 and served in the U.S. Army.
Nives' photograph as a child appears in the book French Children of the Holocaust, on which the current exhibit in Union's Nott Memorial is based. He now lives in New York City, and has been active in preserving the memory of Holocaust victims.
Au Revoir, Les Enfants, made in 1987 by the late Louis Malle chronicles the director's boyhood experience at a boarding school in Avon, France. Three Jewish boys, hidden by Father Jacques, become the tragic heroes of the film as authorities remove them. As the boys were being led away, Malle remembers, “I will remember that cold January morning the rest of my life.”
Lessons for Humanity: French Children of the Holocaust – A Memorial Exhibition and Of Light Amidst the Darkness – The Danish Rescue is presented by Union College and the Holocaust Survivors and Friends Education Center. Major support is provided by an anonymous donor from the Union College family.