Presented with support from Simon Fund for Holocaust Remembrance

Honor the memories of those who perished during the Night of Broken Glass pogrom in 1938, with special guest, Ron Coppel, a second-generation Holocaust survivor.

Ron Coppel's father, Werner was born in Germany. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 at the age of 17. Twenty-two months of starvation and deprivation followed. It was in January 1945 when, along with about 60,000 other prisoners, Werner was forced to walk from Auschwitz back toward Germany.

During this infamous "Death March," Werner escaped and subsequently met and wed Trudy Silbermann, Ron's mother, who had been a Jew in hiding. Upon coming to America, specifically Cincinnati, Ohio, no one spoke about the Holocaust until the late 1970's when the first of the so-called "Deniers" appeared.

Like so many survivors throughout the country, Werner realized if he didn't speak out, who would? And so, Werner would spend the rest of life speaking publicly to schools, universities, civic groups, libraries, the Ohio General Assembly, in FBI and Police Academy training programs and interviews on local and national TV news programs.

Today, Ron honors Werner's memory by following in his father's footsteps in presenting his family's story and the lessons to be learned from it.