Jamie Howell
  Staff Writer

This year, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Lloyd Wolf gave the eighth annual Schleunes lecture at Greensboro College.

Wolf was introduced by Dr. Jon Epstein who said that in the past the Schleunes lectures have been very dark and that this year they wanted to do something different.

According to Dr. Epstein, Wolf is a photographer whose work has been published in several publications including the Washington Post, National Geographic Explorer, and Vogue.

His lecture was based on his photo essay “Great love stories: Holocaust survivor couples” which, according to Dr. Epstein, was published in Moment magazine and won a Simon Rockower Award of Excellence. The lecture was about the lives of couples who survived the Holocaust together.

“Many of us know the misery of the Holocaust,” said Wolf, “but here’s people who survived. People who survived together.”

The first story Wolf told was about two artists named Irene and Arzrial who met in one of the Nazi Labor camps. The image he showed was one of the couple sitting in front of a painting that Irene had done of the two of them.

According to Wolf, Irene fled to Belgium when World War II broke out but was turned into the Gestapo and ended up in a camp where she would eventually meet the man who would become her husband.

While in the camps their artistic talent was used by the Nazi soldiers, stated Wolf; the Nazis were low on artists and sometimes the guards would have the two of them paint portraits.

Wolf explained that when Irene and Arzrial were able to escape the camps they moved to Palestine and then eventually to the U.S. where they flourished as artists.

Wolf said that when he asked Irene how they fell in love she responded saying “in the camps you saw the person for who they really were.”

Another story Wolf told was about Morry and Stefa Markesa. According to Wolf both of them were from Poland and had known each other before the war. They both worked in a Nazi munitions factory during the war.

According to Wolf, Stefa tells a story about one of her friends stealing bread out of desperation and being hung in front of everyone in the factory as punishment. Then, he said, she talks about when she came to the US as a young mother and heard women complaining about how hard the war was for reasons such as difficulty finding Nylon.

Wolf described that when they were in the munitions factory, Morry would sneak food to Stefa and her sister. Stefa told Wolf, “we thought we’d never have enough to eat.”

Morry found out at one point that soldiers were coming to collect people to take them to the death camps, and he hid Stefa and her sister in a latrine for a full day, putting up an “out of order” sign in order to keep them hidden.

They were liberated on Jan. 16 1945, said Wolf, got married a week later, and celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary about 10 years ago.

According to Wolf, Sam and Regina Spiegel also met in a slave labor munitions factory where they fell in love. They were then sent to Auschwitz and they didn’t get to see each other again for a long while until they both managed to escape and get to each other.

Wolf said that he really wanted a picture of the two of them kissing but he was uncomfortable asking because people their age could be very old fashioned.

He said that Sam heard through a third party and called him one day saying “Come on over, I kiss her every day.”

Wolf then told the story of Bella and Leon Simon, who met in a transition camp in Holland.

According to Wolf, Leon declared “she was the liveliest, prettiest girl.” Leon had been there for a while, and had in a way gotten to know many of the guards. They wanted to stay together but because it was a transition camp it was very likely Bella would be moved, Wolf explained.

In order to stay together Leon asked the commandant of the camp if they could be married, which Wolf said could have easily gotten him shot. Instead though, Wolf said the commandant agreed and they were married in a potato kitchen under a makeshift chuppah.

Irene Weiss was someone who Wolf said he felt the need to mention even though she wasn’t one of the surviving couples. The image Wolf showed of her was one of her sitting in the U.S. Holocaust museum in Washington D.C.

The image she was sitting in front of in the museum was massive and showed possibly hundreds of Jews getting off of a train. One of the women getting off the train, said Wolf, is Irene Weiss herself with her family who were all to die soon after the photo was taken.

Wolf said that Weiss was especially concerned about demagogues and racism in the U.S. saying “I’ve heard this talk before.”

She voiced her concerns again in a Washington post article saying “I am exceptionally concerned about demagogues, they touch me in a place that I remember. I know their influence and, unfortunately, I know how receptive audiences are to demagogues and what it leads to.”