Kansas Wesleyan University welcomed Dr. Geralyn Crain as the speaker for its annual Holocaust Remembrance event. The presentation, “A Story for Our Time: Lessons Learned from a Holocaust Survivor” was held via Zoom and facilitated by KWU’s History Department on April 25.
Crain, the current associate dean for academic affairs at the Creighton University School of Dentistry, is the daughter of Holocaust survivor Alice Kern.
Born in 1923 in Romania, Kern was taken to Auschwitz, and later Bergen-Belsen, in 1944. She would remain in the latter concentration camp until it was liberated in 1945. For three decades, Kern kept her experiences under the Nazi regime private, only breaking her silence with her memoir, “Tapestry of Hope.” Informing younger generations of the realities of the Holocaust became her mission.
Though Kern passed away in 2010, Crain continues her pursuit, taking the lessons she learned from her mother and assuring the significance of the Holocaust is never forgotten.
Crain is an active speaker for the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and the North Carolina Commission on the Holocaust.
Her presentation was streamed by the KWU Student Media YouTube channel, and can be accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80LD1p4RHdo.
Story by Skylar Nelson
