Holocaust survivor Rosa Hirsch Blum will share her story at Ouachita Baptist University on Tuesday, Nov. 18, at 4 p.m in McBeth Recital Hall of the Mabee Fine Arts Center.
Blum was invited to campus by Ouachita’s department of history in conjunction with Dr. Kevin Motl’s senior seminar class covering the Holocaust. The students in the class will have the opportunity to attend a private luncheon with Blum before she presents her testimony on Tuesday.
“We are extraordinarily honored to have her as our guest on campus,” said Motl, associate professor of history at Ouachita.
Blum was born in Domokos, Romania, in 1928. By 1938, she was not allowed to attend school and was trained to be a seamstress. In her remote village, there was little access to information about what Nazi Germany was doing across Europe. In 1944, Blum and her family were taken away at gunpoint to the ghetto at Deja, Romania, and would eventually end up at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Blum moved to Dallas, Texas, in 1950. She worked as a seamstress for Neiman Marcus and later worked for a sample maker. She eventually married Osias Blum and had two sons, Mark and Gary. Blum also has been involved with the Dallas Holocaust Museum and Center for Education and Tolerance.
