Pellissippi State Community College and the Tennessee Holocaust Commission will host Holocaust survivor Mark Schonwetter on Zoom next week, and the public is invited.
The free Zoom webinar will be held at 7 p.m. Monday, April 8. Information about how to join the webinar will be emailed to those who register here.
“This is the third year in a row that the College is able to host a Holocaust survivor around the date honored as Yom HaShoah,” said organizer Amanda Carr-Wilcoxson, an associate professor of history at Pellissippi State. Yom HaShoah, the Hebrew name for Holocaust Remembrance Day, corresponds to the 27th day of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar, which this year falls on May 6.
Schonwetter was a 5-year-old boy when Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, and his father was regularly taken to the police station and questioned about Jews and the community. After his father did not return home one night in 1942, the family escaped their hometown in the middle of the night and survived the next three years of the Holocaust by hiding in Polish families’ attics, barns or in the ground below pigsties during the winters and in a forest during the warmer months. After the forest was invaded, they took on false identities and lived as refugees for five months until they were liberated by the Russian army in 1945.
Schonwetter arrived in the United States in 1961 with only $5 in his pocket and started his career at a jewelry factory by sweeping floors. Within five years, he had been promoted to factory manager and, in 1971, he purchased a wedding ring manufacturing company of his own. Over the next 40 years, Schonwetter grew that manufacturing company, Lieberfarb Inc., into a nationally successful wedding ring and bridal brand. He now dedicates his time in retirement to speaking with students and adults about his life’s journey.
His daughters established the Mark Schonwetter Holocaust Education Foundation in 2019. The foundation funds educational grants to provide learning materials and books, support field trips and programming, and bring Holocaust survivor speakers into schools and classrooms nationwide.
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