Temple Kol Ami to Host Holocaust Memorial Lecture at Winthrop University

The Charlotte Jewish News, March 2023

By Shari Baum

It is now seventy-eight years since World War II officially came to an end in Europe. As the years pass, unfortunately so does the memory of the Holocaust. Recent studies have shown that two-thirds of American millennials do not know what Auschwitz is and twenty-two percent had never even heard of the Holocaust. Sadly, antisemitism is on the rise in the United States and worldwide. It is imperative that we keep the memory, stories, and lessons of the Shoah alive.

Temple Kol Ami is pleased to sponsor a Holocaust Remembrance Day lecture on April 16 featuring Irene Stern Frielich at Winthrop University. We are thrilled that the Winthrop University Department of Political Science, Philosophy, Religion and the Law, as well the International and Global Studies and the Peace, Justice and Conflict Resolution minor programs will be co-sponsors of this event.

Temple Kol Ami is thankful to Kristin Biese Kiblinger, Phd, Professor of Religious Studies, for her assistance in helping to coordinate this program.

Irene Stern Frielich is the daughter of Walter Stern, a German Holocaust survivor, but her father’s ordeal wasn’t talked about too much in her family home. She set aside the unspoken emotions and secrets that permeated her childhood and focused on her education, career, and family. She founded and manages a training consulting business, volunteers with her synagogue, and has played flute in a concert band. She loves to cook, entertain, hear good music, enjoy coffee with friends, snowshoe, and kayak. But it took her until recently to return to the unspoken journey of her family.

When Irene saw hate pour out into the streets in 2016, she became obsessed with her father’s Holocaust survival story. She needed to know more about how he escaped Nazi Germany and how strangers risked their lives to save him. Most of what she learned was from her 2017 viewing of the video testimony her father made in 1993, just a few months before his death. In the video, he said, “I will never go back.”

Irene researched anyway. She wondered if her father would feel betrayed by her visits to Germany. In her obsessive quest to touch her father’s childhood, and understand the father he’d become, she visited locations where eighteen strangers risked their own lives to help her family escape, survive, and hide.

Irene had transformational meetings with the descendant of the German man who obtained her family’s home and business and with the descendant of the Dutchman who hid her father in a barn attic for two and one-half years.

Irene will share her father’s story with her presentation entitled “Shattered Stars: My Father’s Journey Through Courage, Compassion, and Kindness.” Irene’s lecture has been presented to thousands of people and we are excited to have her in the Carolinas to bring this message to our community and the Winthrop University student body. We hope you will join us for this free event on Sunday, April 16, 3 p.m. at the DiGiorgio Student

Center, Winthrop University, 2020 Alumni Drive in Rock Hill, South Carolina. There is free parking in the two lots adjacent to DiGiorgio and refreshments will be served. Please help us to honor the memory of those who perished and maintain the stories of those who survived this unbelievable genocide. As the survivors grow older and pass away, it is our responsibility to never forget!

Temple Kol Ami would like to extend special thanks to Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte whose support has made such a vital program possible.

If you live in York County or the Ballantyne area, Temple Kol Ami might be the place for you! We are a warm and inclusive congregation comprised of Jews from diverse backgrounds. There are so many wonderful advantages to being a member of TKA, not the least of which is being a part of the revitalization of the Jewish community in this area! We hope you will come play and pray with us sometime soon! For more information about Temple Kol Ami, check out our website at www.templekolamisc.org.

Irene Stern Frielich