Biggs Museum to present talk by daughter of Holocaust survivor Nov. 8

The Biggs Museum of American Art will host "Voices of the Generations: This is Your Life" at 2 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 8, with speaker Julie Kohner, whose mother was a Holocaust survivor.

After World War II, Kohner's parents, Hanna and Walter Kohner of Czechoslovakia, were reunited in California, where Walter found work on "This is Your Life," a popular TV program recounting the lives of guests through surprise visits with their friends and families. Hanna, a survivor of five concentration camps, was featured on a 1953 episode of "This is Your Life" and made history as the first Holocaust survivor to share her story on American public television.

Kohner will play her mother's episode during the Nov. 8 program and discuss the impact of this artistic medium on America's growing understanding of the Holocaust. Her parents went on to write a book about their unique experience of survival and reunion, titled "Hannah and Walter, A Love Story," which will also be discussed. This program is free and open to the public.

This program is scheduled to take place just before the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. Kristallnacht was a massive, coordinated attack on Jews throughout the German Reich that began the night of Nov. 9, 1938, and went into the next day.