LEWISTON — Holocaust survivor Max Slabotsky will be the guest speaker at the April 12 “brown bag lunch” hosted by Mayor Robert E. Macdonald as part of National Days of Remembrance Week, which is April 7-14. The event is scheduled for noon at the Lewiston Public Library, Callahan Hall, 200 Lisbon St. The event is free and open to the public.

Slabotsky is a Holocaust survivor who was born in Belgium in 1931. He learned the art of tailoring at his father’s knees and is now a master tailor working in Portland.

In 1943, Slabotsky was arrested, along with his parents, and sent to Auschwitz where he was put to work for the Germans, first on a farm and then cleaning pipes and sorting clothes. He was liberated by the Russians, and his mother, who had been used by the Nazis in medical experiments, survived for a short time after liberation. After the war, Slabotsky became a paratrooper and lived on a kibbutz in Israel before coming to the U.S. in 1955.

Also at the April 12 event, local Rabbi Hillel Katzir of Temple Shalom will give an event blessing, and a brief remembrance 2013 theme video clip from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., “Never Again . . . Heeding the Warning Signs,” will be shown. In addition, a time of questions and answers will enable attendees to interact with the guest speaker.

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