Yom Hashoah Lecture
Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted The Nazis
Daniel Silver

Tuesday, April 20 7:00 - 8:00 PM

Admission is Free. No registration is required.
Photo ID required for entrance.

Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion
One West 4th street (Between Broadway and Mercer)
New York City

The month of April marks a time of deep reflection and introspection for the Jewish people as we remember the destruction of European Jewry during the Holocaust. This Yom Hashoah we recognize the lives of the Jews who lived and worked in Berlin's Jewish Hospital, which continued to function under the Nazis and was able to rescue the lives of Jews during the Holocaust. Join author Daniel Silver on Thursday, April 20th at 7:00 pm as he presents the remarkable, little-known story of Berlin's Jewish Hospital - the only Jewish institution in Germany to survive the Holocaust in his book Refuge in Hell: How Berlin's Jewish Outlasted the Nazis.

How did Berlin’s Jewish Hospital, in the middle of the Nazi capital, survive as an institution where Jewish doctors and nurses cared for Jewish patients throughout World War II? How was it possible that when Soviet troops liberated the hospital in April 1945, they found some eight hundred Jews still on the premises? Daniel Silver carefully uncovers the often surprising answers to these questions in his book Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis.

The story centers on the intricate machinations of the hospital’s director, Herr Dr. Walter Lustig, a German-born Jew whose life-and-death power over medical staff and patients and finely honed relationship with his own boss, Adolf Eichmann, provide vital pieces to the puzzle - some have said the miracle - of the hospital’s survival.

Daniel Silver has served as general counsel to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. He has a law degree and a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Harvard. He is an active member in Washington D.C.'s largest conservative Jewish congregation and lives in Chevy Chase, MD.