Sunday December 2nd, 2007
10:30-12:00 Noon
Miriam Winters*, Phd.
Presents her Book
a/k/a * Maria Orlowski
Dr. Maria Orlowski (Miriam Winter)
IN SEARCH OF MEMORY: A HIDDEN CHILD IN For Additional Information: www.miriamwinter.com
POLAND DURING THE HOLOCAUST
Maria Orlowski has a doctorate in theatre from Michigan State University (1992) and is a graduate of the Leon Schiller Advanced State School for Theatre in Lodz, Poland. Her own most recent performance was in the Michigan Radio Theatre production of REMNANTS. She has taught acting at MSU and is currently teaching at Jackson Community College, where she also directed ANTIGONE, PEER GYNT, AND ONDINE.
She is a holocaust survivor, one of thousands of Jewish children who survived by hiding their faith and posing as Christian children, living in constant fear of being discovered.
She was born Miriam Winter, the child of Tobias and Lonka Winter, in Lodz, Poland in 1933. She and her family were in the Warsaw ghetto in 1940, then in Ozarow 1940-1941. Young Miriam, age 8, was given by her parents to a Jewish woman from Lubicz, Cesia, who, in a chance meeting on a train, handed her over to a Polish woman, Maryla. Miriam spent the war with Maryla as a hidden child. She changed her name to Maria, became a Catholic and a Pole. After the war, she stayed for a time with Maryla, then was in an orphanage. In 1968 she came with her husband as immigrants to the U.S. She lives in Jackson, MI.
In recent years, Maria Orlowski has searched for the past and the lost identity she left behind. She has participated in several international gatherings of “hidden children.” She has also written TRAINS, a memoir of her hidden childhood and a moving account of her efforts to restore memory and embrace a once-lost identity. The book traces her path through homes and towns in Poland.
She will talk about her personal search, about writing TRAINS and about what she learned in the process. She will reflect on being among the “hidden children” of the Holocaust
TRAINS: A MEMOIR OF A HIDDEN CHILDHOOD
DURING AND AFTER WORLD WAR II,
published in 1997, by Kelton Press.
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