Author Mary Munson Murphy, who wrote Shanghai Deliverance: A Holocaust Survivor’s Story, will speak at MCC on Monday, Nov. 9, during a special event sponsored by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies – Muskegon.
Murphy, who will be interviewed by local journalist Susan Harrison Wolffis, will tell the story of Edi Shafer, one of 35,000 Jews living in Shanghai during World War II, from a writer’s perspective.
The event, which is free and open to the public, takes place at 6:30 p.m. in Stevenson Center Room 1200. The talk marks the 77th anniversary of Kristallnacht, “The Night of Shattered Glass.,” which was the first pogrom of the Nazi regime in Germany.
Shafer’s parents fled Germany after Kristallnacht and she was born a year later. Murphy will discuss Shafer’s story, the challenge of telling the story, the discoveries, and the necessity to gather the stories for the future.
A Holocaust education specialist for the Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education and Resource Center, Murphy resides in Mequon, WI. She taught middle school in La Crosse (Wisc.) Public Schools for 25 years, then served as associate director of education for the Holocaust Museum Houston, in Houston, Texas.
Murphy has edited a collection of survivor memoirs and is working on the editing of a second volume. She is a 2001 graduate of the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teacher Program sponsored by the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.
In 2008, the Congregation Sons of Abraham in La Crosse presented Mary with its Gregory P. Wegner Holocaust Educator Award.
For more information, contact Trynette Lottie-Harps at (231) 777-0559 or visit http://chgs-muskegon.com/