The library will host a discussion on the book 50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany by Steven Pressman on Wednesday, April 20, at 2:00pm and 6:00pm in the Community Meeting Rooms.
In early 1939, few Americans were thinking about the darkening storm clouds over Europe. Nor did they have much sympathy for the growing number of Jewish families who were increasingly threatened and brutalized by Adolf Hitler's policies in Germany and Austria.
But one ordinary American couple decided that something had to be done. Despite overwhelming obstacles—both in Europe and in the United States—Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus made a bold and unprecedented decision to travel into Nazi Germany in an effort to save a group of Jewish children. This is their story.
This program is part of the library's Americans and the Holocaust exhibition, which is a traveling exhibition from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The exhibition will be at the library from Saturday, March 26 through Friday, May 6. For more information, please visit https://www.marshalltownlibrary.org/americans-and-the-holocaust-exhibition/.