© Boris Buchholz

October 11th, 2011
Press Release

New President of the International Auschwitz Committee

Following the death in August of Auschwitz survivor Noach Flug, the survivors of Auschwitz have now elected Roman Kent from New York as the new President of the International Auschwitz Committee: the International Auschwitz Committee unites organisations, foundations and Holocaust survivors from 19 countries.

Roman Kent was born in 1929 in the Polish city of Lodz. His years of humiliation and suffering during Nazi rule took him from the Ghetto in Lodz to Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen and other concentration camps. He was liberated – together with his brother Leon – at Flossenbürg concentration camp on 23 April 1945. In 1946, the two brothers, along with other children and teenagers who had survived the Holocaust, received the chance to go to the USA as "orphans". Roman Kent, a businessman, lives in New York with his wife Hannah who was also a prisoner in Auschwitz.

He is chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and treasurer of the Jewish Claims Conference.

Roman Kent has been involved as vice-president of the International Auschwitz Committee since 2003. Following his election as president he stressed: "We want to pass on our memories to the young people. We appeal for tolerance and democracy, for a world of justice. The worst failing in our times is indifference. We could really do with an eleventh commandment: when injustices take place, when people are discriminated against and persecuted – never remain indifferent. Indifference kills. This is the purpose of our work, and this is the work we shall continue."

And in Berlin Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice-President of the IAC, added: "We are happy and grateful that survivors of Auschwitz are still able to head and represent the International Auschwitz Committee. Their voices have weight. Their legitimation is considerable, not least because they carry with them the voices of those who remained in the camps. And it is for this very reason that young people throughout the world are eager to talk with them."

Berlin, October 2011

For more information please contact: Christoph Heubner, mobile ++49 172/3 93 22 62

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