Students in Mrs. Emily Schroeder’s genocide course assembled in our high school library last week to hear from two speakers with close ties to The Holocaust.

Our first speaker was Sheila Weinbach. She spoke on the story of her late husband, Kurt, who fled Vienna as a child after the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938. 

Kurt lived for a time in China and Israel before settling in Rochester in 1957 where he met and ultimately married Sheila two years later in 1959. 

Kurt died in 2010 and Sheila has taken on the responsibility of sharing his and the Weinbach family’s incredible story of escape and survival ever since. 

Our second speaker was Charles Konar. His late father, Harry, was a survivor of the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland and immigrated to the United States in 1948.

Konar spoke on his father’s experiences at Treblinka, his liberation near the end of the war and the weight he carried with him until his death in 2012. 

We’re grateful to Mrs. Weinbach and Mr. Konar for coming in to share their loved ones’ stories and proud of our students for engaging with this difficult topic in such a mature way.