Holocaust Survivors To Tell Their StoriesApril 7, 2009 at 7:30–9 p.m.

Margot DeWilde was imprisoned in the experimental block at the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Murray Brandys spent six years in labor and concentration camps before surviving a death march. Both emigrated to Minnesota after the war.

Brandys lived in a small town in Poland before Hitler invaded. At age 14, Brandys was arrested and transported to a forced labor camp. His family was later taken to Auschwitz and he never saw his parents or sisters again.

Over the next six years, Brandys worked in several different labor and concentration camps, including Buchenwald. Near the war's end, he and about 2,000 others were on a forced death march from which only 200 survived. Brandys was twenty years old.

Margot DeWilde's family went into hiding in 1942 but they were arrested and DeWilde was taken to Auschwitz. Most Jewish people deported to Auschwitz were immediately sent to the gas chambers, but Margot became one of many test subjects on whom brutal medical experiments were performed. Even as she endured the treatments and the perpetual hunger that pervaded the camp, DeWilde spoke often of a "guardian angel" that watched over her.

The event is sponsored by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota and the Community Service Center at Gustavus Adolphus College.