Four Perfect Pebbles

The Hewlett-East Rockaway Jewish Centre will be hosting noted Holocaust speaker Marion Blumenthal Lazan on May 2 at 7:30 p.m. for its Yom HaShoah Memorial as she recalls the devastating years that shaped her childhood. Lazan is the author of “Four Perfect Pebbles — A Holocaust Story.”

Year after year, school after school, organization after organization, Lazan has not tired of telling her story of courage, survival, and reconciliation.

Following Hitler’s rise to power, the Blumenthal family — father, mother, Marion, and her brother, Albert — were trapped in Nazi Germany. They managed eventually to get to Holland, but soon thereafter it was occupied by the Nazis. For the next six and a half years the Blumenthals were forced to live in refugee, transit, and prison camps that included Westerbork in Holland and the notorious Bergen-Belsen in Germany. Though they all survived the camps, Walter Blumenthal, the father, succumbed to typhus just after liberation.

It took three more years of struggle and waiting before Marion, Albert, and their mother at last obtained the necessary papers and boarded ship for the United States. Their story is one of horror and hardship, but it is also a story of courage, hope, and the will to survive.

 The Hewlett-East Rockaway Jewish Centre is located at 295 Main Street in East Rockaway. For more information call (516) 599-2634.