HOLOCAUST CENTER BOSTON NORTH

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GREGOR SHELKAN*

I was born on December 11, 1915 in Liebau, Latvia to Abraham Simon Shelkan and Sarah Leah Fraub.

My childhood was wonderful. My parents raised me and my sisters and brother as observant orthodox Jews. At the age of seventeen, I received a scholarship to study voice at the Vienna Conservatory of Music, graduated as a state proven opera singer and was then engaged at the Riga National Opera until Hitler came to Vienna.

Two of my sisters went to Palestine before the war. Twenty-two members of my family were killed during the Holocaust. He was the sole survivor of a massacre of intellectuals in Riga. I was saved by a Latvian who recognized me and pulled me out of the group. He told me never to leave Latvia; he would always find a way to protect me.

For two years I was in the Riga Ghetto and four concentration camps (Stutthof, with the constant smell of burning flesh; Borgraben, a camp without water; Kaiserwald; and Gottendau).

After being freed on March 10, 1945, I battled typhus for four months. I refused to return to Russia because many of the surviving Jews there were accused of helping the Germans.

In 1946, I met my wife, Bertha Kerson, who worked as an American White House Press Secretary in the Truman administration. We married in the United States and have two daughters and five grandchildren. I have been a cantor for 40 years at Congregation Mishkan Tefila.

To me, the greatest gift is that of freedom.

*Deceased

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