Son of Holocaust survivor to talk at Tigard Library

One family’s ordeal at Auschwitz leads their descendant to talk about experiences at the notorious death camp

By Geoff Pursinger

The Times, Nov 12, 2009

Peter Wigmore

Submitted photo

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A local family is speaking out about events that happened more than 60 years ago.

Peter Wigmore, of Gladstone, will be speaking at the Tigard Library, Nov. 17 describing his family’s ordeal at the hands of Nazis while interred at Auschwitz – the infamous Nazi concentration camp where more than 1 million people lost their lives during World War II.

“It’s so difficult to focus on the horrors that happened there without focusing on a specific person,” said Wigmore, 59, a retired teacher from the Lake Oswego School District. “So I will focus on my mother and her family and what happened to them while they were at Auschwitz.”

This is the third year that the Tigard Library has hosted events around the Holocaust.

“My personal philosophy on this is that there are some things that deserve to be remembered, such as (Neil Armstrong landing on the moon) and some things that need to be remembered, such as the murder of 6 million people,” said Erik Carter, a Tigard Library reference librarian who heads the annual talks.

This year’s talk is in observance of the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, a coordinated attack by the German government which ended in the deaths of 99 Jews, and the arrest and subsequent placement of 25,000 to 30,000 in concentration camps.

Wigmore’s mother, Rosa, was sent to the concentration camp in Poland in 1944 with her family when she was 20 years old. During her time in the camp she was one of many Jewish prisoners subject to experimentation by Josef Mengele, a Nazi doctor known for his frequent use of inmates for human experimentation.

“I have high hopes for this talk,” Carter said. “It’s certainly going to be shocking.”

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