The CU and broader publics are invited to a lunchtime talk by Barbara Steinmetz, a child survivor of the Holocaust, who managed to escape Hitler-controlled Europe to the Dominican Republic. Her testimony will take place on Tues., Mar. 18, 12:30-1:45 pm in person at Roser Atlas Center 100 [1125 18th St, CU campus].

It is also streamed on Zoom (to register click: https://cuboulder.zoom.us/meeting/register/34INVCnXSt-L_83xZGmyuA).

This is a public program. Everyone is welcome. No tickets required.

Barbara Steinmetz (née Bandler) was born in 1936 as the second of two children to an orthodox Jewish family in Gyor, Hungary. Shortly after her birth, the family returned to the northern Adriatic town of Lussinpiccolo, (fascist) Italy, where Alexander Samuel and Margaret Charlotte Bandler, Barbara’s parents, had been running a popular hotel since the late 1920s. The family stayed in Italy until 1939, when the implementation of the Italian Racial Laws, including the loss of employment and right to property ownership, forced them to leave the country. They first went to Southern France and, in 1940, managed to reach Lisbon. They secured visas for the Dominican Republic, one of the very few countries to announce immigration opportunities at the 1939 Evian conference. Margaret Bandler’s chemistry degree, specializing in milk products, met Dominican officials’ interest in immigrants with agricultural expertise. The family left Europe by boat in May 1941, first sailing to New York and then onwards to the Dominican Republic. They settled in Sosúa, where the Dominican Republic Resettlement Association (DORSA) had established a new settlement. Barbara stayed in the Dominican Republic with her older sister and parents until June 1945. With the help of relatives in the US, they managed to get visas that enabled them to return and, this time, disembark in New York. Her parents got jobs and moved the family to Detroit, where Barbara and her sister started or continued school.

Image Description: Ann Marie, Margaret Vamosi, and Barbara Bandler in front of Algonquin, which took them from New York to the Dominican Republic, June 1941.

Organized by Profs. Paul Shankman and Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, the Singer Chair in Jewish History. Co-sponsored by the Departments of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures and History as well as the Program in Jewish Studies.