Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust and the Wallis Annenberg Center Present VOICES OF HISTORY

Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, in partnership with the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, will present "Voices of History," a virtual performance of an original production based on the stories of Holocaust survivors, Friday, July 17 at 3 p.m. via Zoom.

The production is the culmination of the museum's annual Voices of History summer theater workshop for students, which this year was virtual for the first time.

During the workshop, the Los Angeles-area students digitally met with survivors Rita Lurie and Joseph Alexander and worked with museum and Wallis staff to create the original theater piece inspired by the survivors' experiences. The 90 minute performance will be followed by a Q and A with the students.

Rita Lurie was a five-year-old living in Poland when she and 14 other members of her family went into hiding from the Nazis. What they thought would be a week or two in an attic turned into almost two years. Rita and her family lived in the attic until the war ended. After the war they lived and moved around in several displaced person camps for 5 years. Eventually, the family was sponsored by a relative living in the U.S. and immigrated, settling first in New York. Rita married Frank Lurie and had three children, Gwyn, Leslie, and David. Rita and her daughter, human rights activist Leslie Gilbert-Lurie, co-authored the memoir "Bending Toward the Sun," which brings together the stories of three generations of women and reveals how deeply the Holocaust lives in the hearts and minds of survivors and their descendants.

Joseph Alexander was born in 1922 in Kowal, Poland. He and his family enjoyed a comfortable and stable life until Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939. At the beginning of the war, Joe's family fled and joined other relatives in the town of Blonie. In late 1940, Blonie's Jews were transported to the Warsaw Ghetto. Joe's father bribed some guards to let Joseph and two of his siblings escape back to Kowal. This was the last time he saw the rest of his family. From Kowal, Joe was sent to different concentration camps including Auschwitz-Birkenau. After the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, he was sent from Auschwitz back to the Warsaw Ghetto to clean up the destruction's aftermath. As the Polish Home Army advanced towards Warsaw, Joe was sent to camps in Germany, and then on a death march. He was liberated by American troops in 1945. He immigrated to the United States in 1949 where he married and had two children.

A donation of $10 is suggested. For more information and to register visit: http://www.lamoth.org/news--events/events/vohtheater/

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