By Zoe Elrod, Internal Communications Coordinator 

In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, we reflect on a meaningful program that our libraries hosted last Spring. This highly successful series of programs featured Holocaust educator, award-winning producer and activist Michael Korenblit. Partnering with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s traveling exhibition, Metro Library welcomed hundreds of attendees across multiple branches for Korenblit’s presentations based on his book Until We Meet Again: A True Story of Love and Survival.

Throughout April and May, Korenblit led four programs at Southern Oaks, Northwest, Belle Isle, and Downtown libraries, drawing standing-room-only crowds and stirring powerful audience engagement. Each presentation transported attendees to Hrubieszow, Poland in the late 1930s and ’40s, where Korenblit’s parents were torn apart by the Nazi regime and miraculously reunited after the war. Their journey from occupied Poland to eventual resettlement in Ponca City, Oklahoma, became not only a testament to survival but a foundation for Korenblit’s lifelong work in human rights education.

“It is so important that people study the Holocaust because it's got so many lessons dealing with the world around us today,” Korenblit told the library leading up to the event. “Whether it's dealing with bullying in schools and businesses or issues of genocide, even how we treat each other as human beings.”

Audiences were visibly moved by what Korenblit refers to as the “three miracles” of his family’s story: the survival of his parents through separate camps, their post-war reunion, and the discovery, nearly four decades later, that his mother’s brother had also survived, living in England after the family had presumed him lost.

At the Belle Isle Library during a completely packed event with 95 attendees, an audience member even revealed that she was one of the young girls present at the 1958 Katz Drugstore sit-in along with Clara Luper, starting a larger conversation about the history of Civil Rights in America and its relation to the persecution of Jewish people during the Holocaust and through history.

In addition to the speaking series, the library system hosted the Americans and the Holocaust traveling exhibit and circulated the Holocaust Resource Collection to four different branches. Typically housed at the Downtown OKC Library, the collection features materials for all ages and explores how Americans responded to Nazi persecution.

“I think it's absolutely imperative that we have that resource, and that people know about the books they can go and read dealing with the Holocaust, with all kinds of books from fiction for kids to nonfiction for adults.” Korenblit said about the Holocaust Resource Collection.

By amplifying personal narratives like that of the Korenblit family, the Metropolitan Library System helped foster empathy, awareness, and a deeper understanding of the relevance of Holocaust history in today’s world with these events.

The library system extends its deepest gratitude to Michael Korenblit, the Respect Diversity Foundation, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and our engaged Oklahoma communities for making this series so impactful.