Press Release

Contact:
Doug Stone or Barbara Laskin
651-696-6203

During Nov., Macalester hosts “A Reason to Remember:
Roth, Germany 1933-1942”
Former Roth Resident to Speak Monday, Nov. 12

St. Paul, Minn. – “A Reason to Remember: Roth, Germany 1933-1942,” tells the personal story of the five Jewish families who lived in the small village of Roth and brings history to life in an intimate and personal way through photographs, documents and eyewitness testimonies.  During the month of November, Macalester College is hosting the exhibit which introduces the families as they lived in 1933 and details what happened to them during the Nazi era.  Herbert L. Roth, who was born in Roth, Germany, will speak at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 12, in Weyerhaeuser Memorial Chapel.

Through the use of photographs, documents and personal testimonies, the exhibit illustrates how the relations between these families and their neighbors were systematically dismantled. The stark contrast between the ordinariness of their lives and the radical way in which their lives were changed by the Nazis and their collaborators through persecution and terror provokes questions about choices people made. Visitors are engaged in a personal, intimate, and emotional way with the lives of Roth’s former Jewish residents and become well acquainted with the men, women, and children of the village.

Herbert L. Roth was born in Roth, Germany in 1923 and fled Germany with his nuclear family in 1938.  Other relatives, who could not find sponsors abroad, were deported in 1942 and died in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.  He will be talking about his own experiences, the experiences of family members, and the background to the Remembering Roth exhibit.

“A Reason to Remember: Roth, Germany 1933-1942” is a traveling exhibit created by Hatikvah Holocaust Education Center in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Macalester College, founded in 1874, is a national liberal arts college with a full-time enrollment of 1,873 students. Macalester is nationally recognized for its long-standing commitment to academic excellence, internationalism, multiculturalism and civic engagement.