Holocaust survivor Lea Malek will speak during an online talk hosted by Finger Lakes Community College on Tuesday, April 5. Photo provided by FLCC

Finger Lakes Community College will host an online talk by Holocaust survivor Lea Malek on Tuesday, April 5 from 1 to 2:30 p.m. The link is available s link: https://flcc.webex.com/meet/robert.brown.

Lea Malek was born in Janoshalma, Hungary in 1939. Her father died in a labor camp before her younger sister was born. Lea was 5 years old when the rest of her family was loaded onto cattle cars bound for Auschwitz.

Along the way, the train suddenly stopped and was split. A large landowner needed some slave laborers, and the people in Lea’s car were sent to work the farm. Otherwise, Lea would not have survived. Her train was part of the failed “Blood for Goods” deal where Adolph Eichmann put 20,000 Jews “on ice” for future trading by sending them to work camps in Austria instead of to Auschwitz.

Only three Jewish children – Lea, her sister and one other girl – survived to return to their hometown in Hungary. Lea also witnessed the brutality of the Hungarian revolution in Budapest at age 16. She had hoped to come to the United States, but the U.S. had closed its borders. Lea went to Israel in 1957 where she married and came to the U.S. in 1959.
She retired from her well-known bakery, Malek’s, a few years ago and has only recently begun to speak about her experiences.

This event is part of the History, Culture and Diversity Series organized by Robert Brown, professor of history.

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