HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR RENEE FIRESTONE TELLS HER STORY ON MAY 11 AT UCSC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Renee Firestone survived Auschwitz. For 50 years she has remembered the final words of those who did not. "The last words when someone was taken away were always 'Remember us if you survive,'" says Firestone, who was eighteen years old when she was imprisoned.

On Wednesday, May 11, at 8 p.m., Firestone will give a free public talk in the Kresge Town Hall at UC Santa Cruz. Her talk is titled "Where Have All These Faces Gone: A Holocaust Survivor's Perspective on the Patterns of Racism and Resistance." She will also attend a brown-bag lunch on Thursday, May 12, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the UCSC Women's Center, and the publis is invited.

For the last seventeen years, Firestone, 70, has worked with the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Educational Outreach Program in Los Angeles, telling her story to schoolchildren, church groups, and other organizations around the country. "Seventeen years ago, people considered it a Jewish problem and couldn't understand why we'd want to teach about the Holocaust to non-Jewish children," says Firestone. "Today there is much greater awareness and people realize what a human problem this was." Firestone was involved earlier this year with the court-mandated counseling of a dozen young members of the Fourth Reich Skinheads of Orange County, who were plotting to start a race war against Jews, blacks, and other ethnic minorities when federal agents intervened.

Firestone is struck by the sensitivity of the young people she meets today. "Junior high school and high school students are much more compassionate and understanding of their fellow man than the previous generation was," she says. "They're asking very personal questions. They're not just asking for facts. They really want to feel. It's a very good sign. I have very great hopes for the future generation.

"I tell them they're the last generation that will hear from survivors personally, and it will be their responsibility to tell others," says Firestone, who was born in Czechoslovakia. She and her 14-year-old sister and parents were taken to Auschwitz. "We had no idea about the extermination camps. No idea," she says. "It was the greatest mystery to me, why we were there and what was happening."

The girls were separated from their parents upon arrival, and Firestone asked a guard when they would be reunited. The guard, pointing to the chimney of a crematorium, told Firestone: "There go your parents through that chimney, and when you go through it, you'll be reunited with them."

Firestone's mother and sister were murdered; her father died from tuberculosis shortly after liberation. Firestone emigrated to the United States in 1948 with her husband and infant daughter. People didn't want to hear about the Holocaust after the war, says Firestone. "People didn't believe us. I don't blame them--maybe I wouldn't have believed it, either. We had to start a new life, we had to start new families."

A retired fashion designer, Firestone lives with her husband in Beverly Hills. They have one adult daughter and a granddaughter.

The campus sponsors of Firestone's visit are Kresge College, the Center for Cultural Studies, and the Boards of Studies in Community Studies, Women's Studies, and American Studies. For more information about the events, call the Public Information Office at (408) 459-2495.

(This release is also available on UC NewsWire, the University of California's electronic news service. To access by modem, dial 1- 209-244-6971.)

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