Holocaust Survivor’s Daughter to Speak at JCC
Augusta philanthropist Helen Bissell highlights the Yom HaShoah commemoration April 15.
Holocaust educator Helen Bissell will be the featured speaker at the Marcus JCC’s annual Yom HaShoah commemoration Sunday, April 15, at 3:30 p.m.
Bissell, an Augusta resident, is the daughter of Holocaust survivor Abe Korn, whose story is told in the memoir “Abe’s Story.”
Korn was 16 when the Nazis invaded his hometown, Lipno, Poland, on the first day of World War II. He spent the entire war in some form of captivity, first being forced into two ghettos, then being sent to eight Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. He survived a 45-day death march from Auschwitz and was liberated at Buchenwald on April 11, 1945.
He came to the United States and was a successful businessman until his death in his late 40s in 1972.
Two decades later, his son, Joseph Korn, took on the task of completing the rough draft of his story, which was published in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of Buchenwald’s liberation.
Bissell has spoken to groups about “Abe’s Story” the past 17 years. She is a philanthropist who has served on the board of the American Cancer Society and the fundraising board of the Children’s Cancer Clinic at the Medical College of Georgia. The Georgia Commission on the Holocaust honored her at the 2006 Days of Remembrance ceremony at the state Capitol.
The free event Sunday will take place the Marcus JCC’s Besser Holocaust Memorial Garden at the Zaban Park campus at 5342 Tilly Mill Road in Dunwoody. It will include memorial readings and the lighting of six torches in memory of the 6 million Jews slain in the Holocaust.
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