Bill aims to ensure standard statewide curriculum on the Holocaust.
Senator Lauren Book (D-Plantation) is bringing Auschwitz concentration camp survivor Magdalen Bader to the Florida Capitol Thursday, February 27, to speak in support of her Holocaust Education bill (SB 1628). Rositta Kenigsberg, who was born in a displaced persons camp in Austria and is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, will also speak in support. Book’s bill aims to ensure a standard statewide curriculum on the Holocaust is taught to Florida’s public-school students. Stories of a Florida public school Principal’s refusal to call the Holocaust a fact and the school district’s unacceptable delay in removing the administrator made international headlines last year – highlighting the critical need for this legislation.
WHO: Magdalen “Magda” Bader, Auschwitz Survivor
Rositta Kenigsberg, Daughter of Holocaust Survivor
Senator Lauren Book
WHEN: Thursday, February 27
Meeting begins at 9, SB 1628 will be addressed before noon
WHERE: Senate Committee on Appropriations
412 Knott Building
About Magdalen Bader
Magdalen “Magda” Bader was born in Munkacs, Czechoslovakia. She was the youngest of ten children in a middle-class family. Magda was nine years old when the war broke out and remembers being called “dirty Jew” while walking in the street. Magda was forced to wear a yellow star and recalls curfews and restrictions for Jews before she was forced into the Munkacs Ghetto at the age of 14. From there, Magda was transported via cattle car to Auschwitz, where she was separated from her parents, her oldest sister, and her sister’s child. They were never seen again. At Auschwitz, she and her remaining sister were selected to go to a munitions factory from which they escaped shortly before the war ended. After liberation, Magda worked for the British Red Cross. She emigrated to London in 1946, attended art school, and worked many jobs to support herself. Magda now holds a degree from Denver University and a master’s degree in Art from Columbia University. She is a veteran public school art teacher and spent many years teaching in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. Magda is married and has two daughters. She speaks out as part of the Holocaust Documentation & Education Center’s speakers’ bureau and educational outreach programs so no one should have to experience what she did.
