Thursday, October 12, 2023

A historic presentation about Harry Roth who resided in Norwalk and his heroism during the holocaust. Recently, Bruce Mainzer decided to better organize the affairs of his 103 year old mother who had Alzheimer's. He first looked into a bank safety deposit box which revealed new details about his mother's escape from Nazi occupied Prague in 1939. Bruce was able to connect the clues from the documents from the safety deposit box with stories from his own family members and of newly discovered relatives in Israel and the US of the hero who impersonated an embassy employee to fool the Nazis. Bruce's mother and aunt were the first Jews to try out the forged document scheme and made it to Paris and then the US. Upon hearing of the two sisters' successful escape, the hero then used the same methods to eventually obtain passage for thousands of other Jews to escape Prague and flee to British occupied Palestine. To Register email clahey@norwalkpl.org or phone 203-899-2780 ext 15133