Holocaust Remembrance Day: Dr. Harold Kasimow

Dr. Harold Kasimow, Grinnell College emeritus professor of religious studies, will speak at the annual Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is a commemoration for the approximately 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

He spent 19 months and 5 days hiding from the Nazis in a pit underneath a barn in modern-day Belarus during the Holocaust. 

He was only 3 when the German army took control of his home near what is now Vilnius, Lithuania, on July 2, 1941. Kasimow stayed with his mother, father, and two sisters under German occupation until April 3, 1942, when a priest told the family about a massacre of Jews nearby. His family escaped and went into hiding. They managed to avoid the Nazis for more than seven years. 

On Aug. 23, 1949, Kasimow and his family arrived in New York City.