A presentation by Denver-based Holocaust survivor Sara Moses, with opening remarks by Pomona High School teacher and Auschwitz-Birkenau Legacy Fellow Lindsay Nazarenus

About Sara Moses

As a young girl, Sara Moses had never seen a flower, or tasted ice cream. Her childhood was filled with violence, loss, and hunger. At seven years old, Moses was one of the youngest children to leave the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp alive. 

The Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities and Chabad of Northwest Metro Denver invite you to hear Sara Moses’s story of childhood terror, tragedy, and survival. 

Today, Moses, who lives in Denver, is an 84-year-old survivor of the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where as many as 50,000 Jewish people imprisoned by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi forces died. The camp was liberated on April 15, 1945 - only a month or two after Anne Frank, then 15, died in that same camp, and 5 days after Moses’ 7th birthday. 

Moses’ hometown of Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland, was the first of many cities within Poland to become a Nazi-occupied Jewish ghetto during World War II. She was separated from her family; her mother was sent to the death camp Treblinka, where she was murdered in the gas chamber, and her father sent to a concentration camp in Poland. Moses was emaciated and sick with typhus when Bergen-Belsen was liberated. Eventually, after she recovered and her name was placed on a list of Holocaust survivors, she was reunited with her father. 

“Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen from starvation and typhus,” Moses said. “At that time, I was right where she was, also infected with typhus, starving. ... I lived to tell what Anne Frank would tell if she was alive. That’s what makes my story so important.”

As many as 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, including an estimated 50,000 at Bergen-Belsen, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia and Holocaust Resource Center.

About Lindsay Nazarenus - Opening Speaker

Lindsay Nazarenus is a current educator at Pomona High School in Arvada. In the Fall of 2021, she was granted the honor of becoming an Auschwitz-Birkenau Legacy Fellow. Along with teachers from across the county, she traveled to Poland to gain an in-depth understanding of events that occurred at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp during World War II.  

While there, Lindsay spoke with survivors and collaborated with educators from all over the world to create a learning curriculum that will help students from all over the country to connect with this chapter of history. Yet, this opportunity was more than a learning experience. As a Jewish woman, Lindsay knew visiting this harrowed ground would force her to acknowledge her own historical pain and sorrow and realize the true value of remembrance.