Yom Hashoah speaker Marguerite Mishkin

Marguerite Mishkin, a "hidden child" of the Holocaust, will speak about her life.

Hidden Children is a term for the children who, during the Holocaust, were hidden in various different ways in order to save them from the Nazis.

Her talk is sponsored by the Yom Hashoah Committee of the Quad Cities and Augustana's Center for the Study of Judaism and Jewish Culture. She also will speak at 7 p.m. April 15 at the Holocaust Remembrance Service at the Tri-City Jewish Center, 2715 30th St., Rock Island.

Before the lecture, student winners of the annual "Responses to the Holocaust" award will be recognized.

Mishkin was born to Jewish parents in Belgium in 1941. Her father was taken to Auschwitz concentration camp the next year and died there. Knowing that Marguerite and her older sister, Annette, were in great danger, their mother approached the Belgian Resistance movement for help. Se was able to send the girls into hiding with a rural Belgian Catholic family in 1943. They remained with that family until 1946. In 1944, Marguerite’s mother was captured and sent to Auschwitz, where she died. 

After the war, Marguerite and her sister were sent to a Jewish orphanage in Brussels. They both were adopted by a Chicago rabbi and his wife in 1950. Marguerite grew up in Chicago, graduated from Roosevelt University and became a teacher. Now retired, she often speaks on the Holocaust to school, college, and community groups.

Mishkin and her sister have donated their personal papers to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.  A book about her childhood, "A Nazi Loved Me: the Story of Marguerite Mishkin," was written and illustrated by Bettendorf students Maya Baker and Erin McQuillan.

Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Day, is a day of commemoration for those who perished in the Holocaust.