Holocaust survivor Gideon Frieder will share his survival story Monday on the University of Central Arkansas campus in Conway, the university said.
Frieder’s father was a rabbi in Slovakia at the start of World War II and became the liaison with Slovak authorities for the “Working Group,” a secret Jewish rescue organization, the university said. During the uprising against the Slovak Republic regime, essentially a puppet state for Nazi Germany, Gideon Frieder fled with his mother and sister from Nove Mesto to Banská Bystrica, the epicenter of the uprising; his father fled separately.
As the Germans neared Banská Bystrica, Frieder and his mother and sister retreated to the mountains, but they were caught in a massacre in the village of Stare Hory. His mother and sister were killed; he was injured but survived. His father also survived the war but died in 1946.
Parts of the Frieders’ story are documented in the books To Deliver Their Souls and …And Heaven Shed No Tears.
Frieder relocated to Israel after the war and remained there until 1975, when he moved to the United States. He holds the A. James Clark Chair of Engineering and Applied Science at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Frieder’s speech is set for 7 p.m. in the Farris Center on the UCA campus. The free, public speech is sponsored by the UCA Department of Philosophy and Religion; UCA Department of History; UCA College of Liberal Arts; UCA College of Fine Arts and Communication; UCA Schedler Honors College; Jewish Federation of Arkansas; University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton; and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.