by Donna DiGennaro
How does it happen that an educator from New York City ends up a Holocaust Scholar, author and screenplay writer? In the case of Sheryl Needle Cohn it all started with a box
full of loose, old black & white photographs of people she had never met. Ms. Cohn’s grandmother, an immigrant from Russia in the early 1900’s had passed away and she was sorting through her grandmother’s things. Those photographs started a journey that still continues today. It has taken Ms. Cohn back to the village where her grandmother was born, to Israel, to Belgium, and even to the Dominican Republic.
As she looked into her family history Ms. Cohn learned that almost all the people in those old, black & white photographs were members of her family and victims of the Holocaust. And so her journey began. After a great deal of research in Europe and Israel, she started going around our nation giving speeches about the Holocaust. Very often, after her talk, someone would come up to her and say, “Have I got a survival story for you” and she would listen and jot down notes on an index card. Eventually, she had quite a stack of cards and decided that these stories needed to be told. Which is exactly what she did in her book The Boy In The Suitcase, Holocaust Family Stories of Survival. Each chapter of the book is devoted to a specific family’s story.
One chapter in the book, “A Baker’s Loaf of Life: A Generation Saved by the Resistance Quaregnon, Belgium,” has gotten a lot of attention and Ms. Cohn worked with a screenwriter to create the script for a motion picture based on those events. When still in process, she is hopeful that it will someday come to pass that this amazing story of love and bravery will make it to the silver screen.
History is the story of individual people. It is being made today and effects each and every one of us. Those of us living in the Clermont area are fortunate to have a beautiful, Historic Village dedicated to preserving our past.
Located at 490 West Ave. on the shores of scenic Lake Minneola, the Village is a unique partnership between the City of Clermont & the South Lake County Historical Society which is open every Friday from 1 pm to 3 pm and every Saturday & Sunday from 1 pm to 4 pm. Just a few short blocks from the Historic Downtown Shopping District, the Village is the perfect place to spend a Fall afternoon. Admission to the Village is always free but a $2.00 donation per person is requested. After touring the Village, please like us on Facebook or mention us on Yelp.
If you are interested in history in general or the history of Lake County in particular, contact the South Lake County Historical Society by going to our website, ClermontVillage.org; by calling our manager, Roxanne Brown, at 352-432-3496 or by attending our membership meetings which are held on the second Monday of every month at 7 pm in the Train Depot in the Historic Village.
The next meeting will be on February 11th.
