Good evening and welcome, im rita lerner, daughter of Holocaust Survivors and trustee of the museum of jewish heritage, a living memorial to the holocaust read it is my pleasure to introduce a special evening. Before we begin tonight id like to say a few words about the Museum Museum of jewish heritage is a leading New York Institution dedicated to fighting antisemitism and bigotry. For more than 20 years, the museum has challenged visitors intellectually, a rigorous understand the ways in which the humanization of the people can involve deeply destructive and area and engaging with history, people of all ages and backgrounds inherit our mission to never forget you and to combat intolerance that endures to this day. If youre interested in receiving any information of upcoming events, please join our mailing list, a sign in sheet can befound at the admissions desk. I also invite you to become a member of the museums community, we are honored to have you with us tonight to celebrate the holocaust survivor author, maximizing. Ive 15, mister eisen was saved from certain death at auschwitz a polish physician who employed him as a cleaner in his operating room. Mister eisen 2016 memoir, by chance alone chronicles his remarkable persistence, liberation and continue with yelling after miraculously surviving auschwitz. By chance alone received 10 of its top literary awards in 2019. Tonight, we celebrate the launch of the book american edition we had the privilege of hearing mister eisen in conversation with veteran producer of 60 minutes sharon finkelstein. Leslie stahl was held up for theimpeachment coverage. At the conclusion of tonights program, we invite you to join mister eisen for a book signing in the lobby by chance alone. It is a available for purchase in our museum shop. We are honored to be joined tonight by are not seen, acting Council General of the canadianconsulate in new york. Mark gordon, executive Committee Member of the usc Showa Foundation, ellie rubenstein, march of the living in canada, phyllis heideman, president of the march of the living and cancer reiki with guitarist sealand from, we like to thank our partners in presenting tonights program. International march of the living, the counselorgeneral of canada in new york , Hanover Square press and the usc Showa Foundation. Before we begin take a moment to silence your cell phones to avoid any disruptions during the program. Thank you and now please join me in welcoming our first speakertonight , acting canadian Council General hawar naseem. You rita. Recently i was not held up by the impeachment hearings in washington. What an incredible honor it is to be here with all of you tonight to pay tribute to a remarkable man , an extraordinary canadian , mister max eisen. My team at the council it has been seeking an opportunity to bring mister eisen to new york. For a man of his age he has a busy schedule and it was not easy to get him here. Thank you for joining us thank you to hanover press, usc Showa Foundation, international march of the living and jewish heritage for bringing max here to tell his story. As a diplomat, i had many incarnations. I spent time, a lot of time in europe and one of the most memorable opportunities for me as i family was to visit poland and to travel to auschwitz with my family, with my wife and son to see and to share with them the tragedies, the horrors and legacy of auschwitz area i am deeply and profoundly inspired by the courage and strength of Holocaust Survivors who despite the depth of the evil they face and despite the complexity of their emotions understand that the holocaust needs to be real to those who were not there. To reconcile the instant horrors of showa with the enduring faith in humanity. Canada has been profoundly shaped by the approximately 40,000 Holocaust Survivors who resettle in our country after the holocaust. And i must add, canada has acknowledged the devastating results of our own inaction and apathy towards jews in the nazi era. Jewish refugees on board that ms st. Louis were turned away and with our Prime Minister issued a former apology in our Houseof Commons in november 2018. The lessons of the holocaust are clear. They need to be repeated. As Prime Minister trudeau has said, never again is not a phrase, its a promise. A promise to stand up to the dangers of hatredand discrimination and the irreversible consequences of inaction. As a new yorker we know all too well as these recent horrificattacks have made clear, hatred is not yet run its course on this earth. We must be vigilant because what we also know is that the modern tools to promote hate are more sophisticated than goebbels radio, newspaper and still. Speaking with my colleagues and learning, i am inspired by the time a big saying whoever saves a single life saves an entire world. And given the Ripple Effect of maxis unyielding commitment to educate younger generations of the dangers of racism and bigotry, i think we can say that by saving max , this surgeon saved much more than one. The opportunity to hear a firsthand account from a survivor has become increasingly rare. I am honored to gather you here to hear max share his story. I hope we will all leave here tonight with a heightened sense of duty to condemn intoleranceand defend human rights in our everyday lives. Please join me in welcoming aviva rajsky, daughter of a holocaust survivor and a senior cancer at chicagos conjugation. She traveled with mister eisen on the 2015 march of the living where sheconducted the choir of the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony investments. Aviva will be accompanied by a grammywinning guitarist for Holocaust Survivors and who lost many members of his family in the holocaust. You all and i look forward to a wonderful evening. [applause] good evening. It is such an incredible honor for me to be here this evening and to sing at this wonderful event in tribute to max eisen, one of the most remarkable people i have ever met. I had the privilege of traveling with max and the 2015 march of theliving. I was in choir that year so this evening i would like to share with you a few of the songs that the students and i sang on that very moving trip. Id like to invite my colleague and dear friend Eli Rubenstein to introduce and give context to the songs i am about to sing. [applause] good evening. The first song is a song called eddie lee, as you walk along the shores of israel in 1940s. He was born in hungary in 1921 but because of the antisemitism she emigrated to palestine in 1939 to help build the jewish state. She later returned to hungary to fight against the nazis but was caught, tortured and executed by the nazis in 1944. She left us thisremarkable poem whose words remind us of the beauty of nature, the sand and sea, the rush of the waters, the thundering heavens that she was robbed of far too early in her young life. [guitar playing] [singing in yiddish] time we sing this song with the children on themarch of the living , the very place that hitlersought to destroy the jewish people, we know the spirit , the values, the lessons that life represents continues to live on. And that way we are making a statement. Hitler, you did not win. We will return here year after year reciting the words from the very people you tried to annihilate. Our next song is called hottie mommy and it reflects a similar sentiment of hope and defiance written in the 12th century by muslim amenities, the expresses a belief that oneday redemption will come to humanity. Many jews recited these words with their last breath before a parish in the gas chambers, still believing that a better day we arrived. You are watching the tv. The senate is about the galvin now for what suspected to be a brief pro forma session area we break away from the discussion to honor our commitment to gather together coverage and we will return the book tv when the senate wraps upits session area. [singing in yiddish] thank you. It is now my pleasure to invite to the state mark gordon who is a member of the eight executive committee of the showa board of counselors who will share with us and innovative joint project between usc Showa Foundation and march of the living involving the testimony of max eisen. [applause] on behalf of the usc foundation i am grateful to be here tonight. To honor and celebrate max eisen and the release ofhis memoir here in the us. What i want to back our colleagues at hanover press for publishing and making this work so widely available. I want to thank the museum of jewish heritage, for hosting tonights event. And the Council General of canada for the long support and involvement. And we want to thank the international march of the living for our partnership between the international march of the living and usc Showa Foundation for including us in this auspicious event tonight. The usc foundation began working with max and his family in 2019 through this partnership with the international march of the living and together these organizations have a joint project to gather the testimonies of Holocaust Survivors in a 360 degree video method in the authentic original location area together, we are working to film at least 10 survivors as they take us on a journey from their hometown to the sites of liberation, sharing their unique and personal stories in the places where he experienced them. Eventually these testimonies will be deeply integrated into the programs and experiences created by the march of the living. Max is one of four survivors so far who have participated in and then filmed on location. Our team traveled with max to the Auschwitz Birkenau State Museum for a day as he shared his story with us and with his son. Who was on the mark for the first time. We traveled to slovakia and his hometown in slovakia where max recalled his childhood and invited us to share what he told his last goodbye to his hometown, once vibrant community that now exists only through him. His communitywill not be forgotten , thanks to his hundred 60 on location interview and the loving details he so generously included in his memoirs. This is all in addition to the usc Showa Foundation having not one but two life history interviews of max in our visual history archive. Both were reported in the 1990s, once taken by the Showa Foundation and Holocaust Education center. Both are accessible through the visual history archives. That testimony is among the 55,000 survivor testimonies that are now accessible or available through over 160 universities and museums on Six Continents around the world and there others of course is his book which is what we are here to celebrate today area now, as i understand it, max did not always wished to tell his story. In the prologue to the book, he talks about the fact that when he first spoke pleasantly about the holocaust in his experiences, at st. Josephs high school, he was very nervous and said he would not do it again. And i think this was a very common reaction among survivors at that time. If i may tell a personal story, i too have, or habitable max or had an uncle max who survived auschwitz. And emigrated to toronto. We are he built a family and live the life. I visited my uncle max in the summer of 1990 shortly after maybe a month or two after i had been on a trip to Eastern Europe and i had visited auschwitz and over dinner, i told him my travels and he asked me maybe 2 or 3 questions about auschwitz and what i had seen there. After dinner, his son harvey my cousin who is 34 years old at the time said to me know, in my entire life that is the most i have covered my father talk about his experiences and i said why do you think that is . He said well, his attitude is what would be the point . Who would listen and mark it would just be complaining to my children. So i think we are as individuals all here incredibly indebted to organizations like the usc Showa Foundation, like the march of the living, like the museum of jewish vintage and organizations like the hanover press who have created outlets for a forum and structure around hearing and learning the stories of the survivors so that they could be passed down so that we can learn from them and so that hopefully never again. Most importantly of course though we are indebted to survivors like max who decided to speak again and again, at countless colleges, universities, highschools, public events. I think hes led 21 trips to auschwitz where hes educated students and adults and shared his experiences in addition to a course giving his testimony, participating in the 360 degree video with the international march of the living and of course publishing this memoir. Id like now to show you a short video that shows the behind the scenes of our time with max and his son ed and we found a 360 degree video that will be incorporated into the march of the livings program. In it you can see the intensity with which max has committed himself to telling his story. Somebody play the video. There has always been a boy there. A terror that you couldnt access, you couldnt get to that. Favorite to strangers more so in ways and expressing feelings that he has his own family so thats one of my reasons for coming here is to see if there was an opportunity to break through some of that. The challenge right now is to see what tours are stored in and filming what were trying to manage. It will be part of maxis story. You want to describe hell, i can give you an influence area there was no humanity there. This was a completely brutal place. Couldnt have any bad thoughts in your head. We had to only think of survival. This was the whole life. You came back and you laydown on your bed. You try to go on. But you know, [inaudible]. How does one survive . I dont know area im so happy to be here. Not so much screaming but i think its overwhelmed. 75 years ago i never thought i would walk out of herealive. But i had a family and their important in my life. [inaudible] [applause] now id like to invite backup Eli Rubenstein, National Director of the march of the living in canada. [applause] thank you mark. Im honored to be able to introduce the main part of our program, the part you are about to hear from max eisen himself. Ive been traveling with him for well over 20 years now and each time continuing to beinspired by his courage, wisdom and eloquence. I recall the early 2000 being with max at Queens University in ontario. For a weekend conference turning out educators and chaperones traveling with us to poland. As we were milling about the reception area of the conference center, a group of queens students passed by. They noticed one of our staff was carrying a sacred torah scroll of the law, the agent five books of moses written by hand on parchment the jewish people had read from publicly for thousands of years. Observing the curious look on the student spaces max patiently explained what these scrolls represented. He concluded his impromptu speech by informing them during the holocaust the nazis murdered thousands of sacred jewish works like this torah they were looking at now. He reminded the students of the quote from either highend , when they burn books only and in the they also burned people. The students were mesmerized during maxis short speech and only reluctantly for themselves a way to return to school activities. At that moment i realized max was a born teacher, a natural educator who had both a desire and ability to share his story and lessons of the holocaust with the most diverse audience and the clearest most accessible manner and in that moment of teaching as you heard was something max has replicated countless times as he has crossed canada, sharing his story of love and loss with thousands upon thousands of people for the last 20 or more years. Only we sail who comes from the same part of europe wanted something along the following lines. To be a jew often the holocaust you have every reason to give up your belief in god. To give up on the jewish people and abandon your trust in humanity, you have every reason to give up your faith in god and to abandon your trust in all humanity but still not to do so. And max like so many other survivors we know perfectly exemplifies his sentiment. Despite having every reason to do so, max did not abandon his faith or give up inhumanity area instead he continues to dedicate literally every day of his life round the clock to teaching the lessons of the showa so it will never happen again. In that effort, max remind us of the hasidic quote who once said if you believe the world can be broken, also believe it can be fixed. If you believe the world can be broken, also believe it can be fixed. So thank you max from the bottom of all our hearts for not getting into despair, not giving up on our world even though you had every reason to do so. Indeed, we are all the better for it. [applause]. I am the substitute. [laughter] i dont do this for a living so the understanding please. Leslie is said to not be here pretty she is a huge fan of max and really wanted to do this and was not able to get on the flight back early enough to be here. Youve got to me. So, max, telus why dont we start by talking about your life and why dont we start by with the beginning of your life before these horrors. Tell us a little bit about your family, where you lived, i know it was czechoslovakia but then it became part of hungary so what was your life like, your home, your family before the w war. Took us about kia was a democratic country and we jews have plenty of golden years and tickles a macchia and presiden president considered him a grandfather and it was made up of about 5000 people and jews were about 10 of the population in approximately 93 and i would say 9 of the families were traditional Orthodox Jews and they were small, three, four farmers and in my town there were two jewish doctors, doctor laszlo and jewish dentist and butcher, baker and mad