October 2, 2006  

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Holocaust Survivor and Author
Jorge Klainman to Speak at Ramapo College

(Mahwah) - Holocaust survivor Jorge Klainman, author of The Seventh Miracle, will speak at Ramapo College of New Jersey Monday, October 23, at 7 p.m. in the York Room located on campus in the Birch Mansion.

The Seventh Miracle, Klainman’s first-person account of being a Holocaust survivor, was written and published in Spanish as El Septimo Milagro.  The author’s account will form the basis of a dual-language program sponsored by the Ramapo College’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Spanish Language Studies Program. 

Klainman will speak about his odyssey of survival in Spanish and Kal Wagenheim, who translated of The Seventh Miracle, will render the author’s remarks into English.

Jorge Klainman begins his depiction of his struggle to remain alive with a near-death experience as a slight fifteen-year-old.  Marked for death by notorious concentration camp commandant Amon Goeth (unforgettably portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List), he miraculously survives his own execution.

“My mind refused to comprehend the reality of what was happening,” Klainman recounts.  “The end had come.  They were going to shoot me and burn me. I thought of my loved ones, and that soon I would be joining them. . . . I reached a state of mind where I just wanted, with all my being, to get it over with.”

Klainman is a retired businessman who put his past behind him when he left Europe for Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1947.  After celebrating his 68th birthday in 1996, he decided to break down “the wall of silence” that he had built “brick by brick.”  His explanation of the title of his book comes as no surprise.  “Six actual miracles occurred, and saved my life,” he says.  “The seventh was my being able to write the story, after so much time.”

Copies of The Seventh Miracle will be available for signing at the program.  For more information or to reserve a seat, please call (201) 684 - 7409.

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