800 New Loudon Road · Latham, NY12110
518-783-7800 ·FAX 518-783-1557 cell 506-8035 ·
Fax
To: / The Jewish World/ From: / Shelly Shapiro
Director, Community Relations Council
783-7800 ext 235 or
Cell – 506-8035
Fax: / Date: / October 19, 2007
.
Kristallnacht Interfaith Commemoration
Wednesday Nov 8th 7 pm with
Premiere & one time showing of the film
“Nicholas Winton: The Power of Good”
the story of one man who saved 669 children from certain death, with presentation by one of the children he saved ,Alice Masters
at Page Hall downtown SUNYA 135 Western Ave Albany
Free and Open to the Public
Nicholas Winton: The Power of Good premieres in the Capital Region as part of Kristallnacht Interfaith Commemoration Wednesday November 8th at 7:00 pm at Page Hall 135 Western Avenue in Albany. The program is free and open to the public .
Nicholas Winton: The Power of Good is a feature film, which recounts the untold story of the “British Schindler”. Nicholas Winton was a 29 year old stockbroker in London, when, as he was to go on a skiing trip he was called to Prague, Czechoslovakia on vacation in the December 1938 After the news of Kristallnacfht in 1938, he saw that Czech children in the Sudetenland were stateless. He understood that these children would soon be doomed by Hitler. He knew he had to take action and devised a rescue operation to save these children. He organized a rescue operation in which terrified parents placed the future of their children in his hands. He saved 669 children. One of these children was Alice Masters, who lives in Maryland, who will be at the Kristallnacht program to introduce the film and answer questions.
This program marks the night of November 9th 1938 when state-sponsored terror began throughout Germany and Austria, called the night the Holocaust began. Almost 100 people were killed, 191 synagogues set on fire, 30,000 Jewish men and boys were arrested and sent to concentration camps where hundreds died. 7,500 businesses were destroyed with shattered storefront glass on the streets. Considered a time of warning, the Nazis called it “Kristallnacht” or “Night of the Broken Glass”. At this time around the world, communities remember this as the time when the Holocaust began and vow to fight bigotry and hatred. The Kristallnacht Interfaith Commemoration is an annual event in its 15th year.
The photograph shows Alice Masters and her two sisters. From left to right: Elli (the youngest, about 4 years younger than me), Alice (me, the middle child), and Josi (the oldest, about 2 years older than me). They are in the dresses their mother made for them before they were taken on the Kindertransport to London.
Alice Masters was born in 1925 in Czechoslovakia. She and her two sisters Josephine and Elli grew up with their parents in the village of Trstena. After the occupation by the Nazis, .her parents watched as Jewish men were rounded up for forced labor, the rights of Czech Jews were taken away. Her parents put Alice and her sisters on the Kindertransport created by Nicholas Winton in 1939. They were placed in a children’s home in England. She was eventually hired by the Czechoslovak Government in Exile. After coming to the United States, she began to work for the International Monetary Fund in WashingtonDC in 1948 and worked there for 35 years retiring in 1983. None of her family survived except her two sisters and one uncle. Her parents died in Auschwitz. In 1950 she married Peter Masters who she met in London in 1947. She met him again in America when he came to New York as a Fulbright scholar. He died March 21, 2005. He is the author of “ Striking Back: A Jewish Commander’s War Against the Nazis”, the amazing true story of a member of the secret WWII British commando unit. The book will be for sale at the Kristallnacht commemoration.
Alice Masters said “ It took 50 years for me to find out that it was Sir Nicholas Winton a 29 year old English stockbroker, who saved my sisters and me and 666 children from Czechoslovakia by arranging the Kindertransports.”
Nicholas Winton wrote in a letter in 1939, “ There is a difference between passive goodness and active goodness. The latter is, in my opinion the giving of one’s time and energy in the alleviation of pain and suffering. It entails going out, finding and helping those who are suffering and in danger and not merely in leading an exemplary life, in a purely passive way of doing no wrong.” Winton did not share his story, which emerged in 1988 after British documentary uncovered some of the children
The Kristallnacht Commemoration features members of the interfaith community including Hedi McKinley, survivor of Kristallnacht who was living in Vienna, Austria in 1938; Rev John U. Miller, Executive Director of the Capital Area Council of Churches ; Ray Sullivan, Deacon Cathedral of Immaculate Conception and Ecumenical Commission on Inter-religious Affairs of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany; Karol Harlow, Baha’I community ; Deepa Varada, Hindu Temple Society of the Capital District; Dr. Sherrie Lyons , KTC Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Center, Albany; and Ghengis Khan, Imam at the Schenectady County Correctional Facility , Rabbi Paul Silton and Cantor Rogerio Marx, Temple Israel , Shelly Shapiro Director Holocaust Survivors & Friends Education Center and, Director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University at Albany .
The Program is sponsored by HolocaustSurvivors & FriendsEducationCenter, the Community Relations Council of the United Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York and the Center for Jewish Studies at the University at Albany. Special Thanks to our corporate sponsors Hill and Markes and The Swyer Companies.