March 6, 2020 – There’s no better way to learn about history than from someone who has lived it, and the Grace A. Dow Memorial Library’s spring lecture series will give patrons the opportunity to do just that! “First Person History” will explore the Cold War and the Holocaust with two people who have lived through these experiences and are now sharing their stories with the world.
On Thursday, March 26 at 7 p.m., Mariana Grigoras will discuss growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Romania in her presentation “The Toll Totalitarianism Takes on the Individual.” Attendees will hear stories about how life in a communist dictatorship shaped her viewpoints, her husband’s decision to defect in 1979, and her subsequent struggle to bring her family to the United States in 1982. Ms. Grigoras is currently an associate professor and department chair of social sciences and humanities at Northwood University.
Holocaust survivor Irene Miller from West Bloomfield, Michigan, will share her experiences on Tuesday, April 28 at 7 p.m. Hear her amazing story of escaping the Nazis in Poland as a child by being smuggled into the Soviet Union, spending years in orphanages in Siberia and Uzbekistan, and discovering that her Polish friends and family had perished during the war. Ms. Miller is the subject of the PBS documentary “Irene: Child of the Holocaust” and the author of her memoir Into No Man’s Land.
Both lectures are free and open to the public and will be held in the Library Auditorium.
The Grace A. Dow Memorial Library is located at 1710 W. St. Andrews Rd and is a service of the City of Midland. For more information on the Library, call the Reference Desk at 989-837-3449 or visit www.gadml.org.