Temple Emanu-El program to feature Raoul Wallenberg talk by Peter Rona
By BETTY NELANDER
Palm Beach Daily News
Thursday, Feb. 24, 2011
What happened to Raoul Wallenberg after World War II? Peter Rona will speak about this, as well as how Wallenberg saved his family during wartime Budapest, at Temple Emanu-El of Palm Beach.
Rona, executive director of the Canadian Friends of Raoul Wallenberg, is scheduled to speak at 7:30 Friday.
Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, is credited with saving about 100,000 lives during the Holocaust.
Wallenberg, who was not Jewish, disappeared in January 1945, in the waning months of World War II. No conclusive evidence of his fate has ever emerged.
Following Rona’s presentation, there will be a dramatic reading of an eyewitness report of a woman saved by the courageous diplomat. The piece was written and will be performed by Pamela Hope Levin, a speaker at international conferences dealing with Holocaust memories.
The woman, Miriam Herzog, was rescued by Wallenberg when she was 17 and on a forced death march from Budapest in 1944. Levin said Herzog’s story resonated for her when she first read it while at Yad Vashem institute because the girl was a teenager like her daughter.
“It was hell beyond imagination during the last weeks of the war,” said Levin. Jews were being rounded up by the Hungarian Nazis, she said, and Wallenburg created fake travel documents that looked authentic and had the stamp of Sweden on them. “Wallenberg used his strength of understanding what the Nazi mind was about.”
A concert violinist, Suzanne Geissler, will play before and after the reading. The evening program is open to all.
On finding inner peace — Slovie Jungreis-Wolff, a lecturer on marriage and relationships and the author of Raising a Child With Soul, recently spoke at the Palm Beach Jewish Center about life’s challenging times and struggle to maintain joy. “Without peace within, one can live in the most beautiful house, but there is no feeling of home,” said Jungreis-Wolff.
“We need to let go of resentments and forgive hurts of the past so that we do not ‘shlep’ around emotional baggage that brings us only to harbor anger and resentment, robbing us of our serenity,” said Jungreis-Wolff, who gave a virtual tour of the tent of Sara, wife of Abraham.
The group enjoyed bread, dips and a buffet.
Jungreis-Wolff’s book is available for sale at the synagogue. Contact Hindel Levitin at 659-3884 or e-mail hindel@palm beachjewish.com.