Holocaust Survivor to Share Her Story in Reading

On March 3, 2025, Reading will bear witness to history as 97-year-old Auschwitz survivor Helga Melmed shares her harrowing story of survival and resilience. Hosted by Chabad of Wakefield, the event will take place at the Reading Memorial High School and is open to the community.

Melmed was just five years old when her schoolteacher in Berlin called her a “dirty Jew” and beat her hands. She was ten when Kristallnacht shattered Jewish homes and businesses. By thirteen, she was deported with her parents to the Lodz Ghetto, where starvation and forced labor claimed her father’s life. She was later sent to Auschwitz, then to brutal labor camps near Hamburg, and finally endured a death march to Bergen-Belsen. Weighing just 46 pounds, riddled with typhus, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis, she was barely conscious when the British liberated the camp on April 15, 1945.