ABC7 Eyewitness News Presents Return to Auschwitz: A Survivor's Story

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Monday, July 22, 2019
ABC7 Eyewitness News Presents Return to Auschwitz: A Survivor's Story
ABC7 Eyewitness News Presents Return to Auschwitz: A Survivor's Story is a special Eyewitness News presentation highlighting a local Holocaust survivor's return to the death camp she survived decades ago.

Fritzie Fritzshall, the president of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie, survived years of hardship and escaped near-certain death in Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp in what was then German-occupied Poland.

More than a million people died at Auschwitz, mostly Jews, including Fritzshall's mother and two young brothers. Her grandfather died on the way to the camp.

She's returned to see the camp before but now, more than seven decades after she was liberated on a death march from Auschwitz, Fritzshall returned for what may be the final time with Chicago's Roman Catholic Cardinal Blase Cupich.

At a time when the FBI data shows that hate crimes are up 17% year to year and anti-Semitic hate crimes are up 37% returning to the place of history's darkest crime carries new relevance today. The Anti-Defamation League also is tracking an uptick in anti-Semitic incidents in the Midwest and nationwide.

Previous Coverage:

Holocaust survivor Fritzie Fritzshall returns to Auschwitz with Cardinal Blase Cupich

Holocaust Survivor Fritzie Fritzshall: 'I wouldn't be here today' without women who saved her life at Auschwitz

Holocaust survivor Fritzie Fritzshall remembers aunt who saved her from Auschwitz gas chamber

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Which countries did the Jews who were deported to Auschwitz come from?

Locations highlighted in ABC 7 Eyewitness News Presents Return to Auschwitz: A Survivor's Story:

Further resources:

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum

Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center

Simon Wiesenthal Center

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