Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

Inseparable: The Hess Twins' Holocaust Journey through Bergen-Belsen to America

Wed, September 25, 2024
Dinner Program
Faris Cassell and Marion Ein Lewin

Stefan and Marion Hess's happy childhood was shattered in 1943. Torn from their home in Amsterdam, the six-year-old twins and their parents were deported to a place their mother called "this dying hell"—the infamous concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. Join writer Faris Cassell, who has chronicled one family’s struggle to survive the Holocaust, as she traces the story from the Hesses' prosperous pre-war life in Germany to their desperate ride in a bullet-strafed boxcar through the rubble of the collapsing Third Reich. The Hesses' saga provides insights into today's menacing rise of anti-Semitism.

Ms. Cassell will also be joined by special guest Marion Hess herself, now known as Marion Ein Lewin, who will offer her own personal reflections on her journey through Bergen-Belsen to America.

Faris Cassell, award-winning investigative journalist, earned her M.S. in journalism with honors from the University of Oregon and her B.A. in History from Mt. Holyoke College. She is the author of Inseparable: The Hess Twins' Holocaust Journey through Bergen-Belsen to America (2023). Her first book, The Unanswered Letter, won the 2021 National Jewish Book Award. She lives with her husband in Eugene, Oregon.

Marion Ein Lewin (née Hess) and her twin brother, Steven Hess, were only six years old when they were taken by the Nazis from Holland to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they endured brutal conditions and lived in a state of perpetual fear. The twins and their parents were imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen for approximately one year, after narrowly escaping being sent to Auschwitz. They ultimately were liberated and moved to the United States in 1947.

This special Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at CMC.

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Claremont McKenna College
385 E. Eighth Street
Claremont, CA 91711

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