Kirschner, Ann (Ann G. Kirschner)

PERSONAL:

Daughter of Sidney and Sala Kirschner; married Harold Weinberg; children: Peter, Caroline, Elisabeth. Education: State University of New York at Buffalo, B.A.; University of Virginia, M.A.; Princeton University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Office—French Children of the Holocaust Foundation, 1775 Broadway, Ste. 417, New York, NY 10019. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Media, marketing, and technology entrepreneur. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, former lecturer; National Football League, former head of new media; Comma Communications (telecommunications consulting firm), former president; former cofounder and executive vice president of sales and marketing for PrimeTime 24 and Satellite Broadcast Networks; former director of new business development, Westinghouse/Group W. Cable; New York Public Library, New York, NY, former assistant to the director of the Berg Collection; Modern Language Association, former assistant director of English programs; has also worked as a freelance writer and editor; Fathom (online knowledge network), president and chief executive officer; City University of New York, New York, NY, dean of Macaulay Honors College. Director of "Letters to Sala" project. Member of board of directors, Topps Company, Theatreworks USA, onhealth.com; member of advisory council, Princeton University English Department.

MEMBER:

National Cable Television Association, New York New Media Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Whiting Fellow in the Humanities; ACE award for marketing; grants from the Texas Committee for the Humanities and the Littauer Foundation.

WRITINGS:

Sala's Gift: My Mother's Holocaust Story, Free Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Letters to Sala: A Young Woman's Life in Nazi Labor Camps, essay by Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, New York Public Library, 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

While Ann Kirschner knew that her mother was a Jewish survivor of Nazi Germany, she understood little else until 1992, when her mother gave her about three hundred letters from the war. Her mother, Sala, had married an American soldier and, after immigrating to the United States and starting a family, had kept her past hidden for fear of shocking her children. The truth was that Sala, née Garncarz, had been forced to work in Nazi labor camps throughout the years of World War II. While somewhat less terrifying than the gas chambers of German concentration camps, the Nazi labor camps were still prisons where ethnic Jews were forced into slavery. Sala managed to survive for several reasons: she was a skilled seamstress whose abilities were valued by the Germans, she was a beautiful teenager who made friends easily, and she drew strength from an older woman who was a fellow prisoner, Ala Gartner. In labor camps, the prisoners were allowed to receive mail, which the young Sala kept hidden because Jews were supposed to return their correspondence to the Germans. During the last two years of the war, however, she was no longer permitted mail, though she did save birthday cards and other gifts from her fellow labor camp comrades.

Kirschner finally received the letters and other written papers when her mother was about to undergo surgery and wanted to make certain her daughter had them. The letters became very dear to Kirschner and, with her mother's permission, she spent about fifteen years sorting through them and getting them translated. In 2005, the Yeshiva University Museum's Center for Jewish History organized an exhibit of the letters, and a year later Kirschner published them in Letters to Sala: A Young Woman's Life in Nazi Labor Camps. A number of critics praised the book as offering a personalized history of a part of the Holocaust that has received less attention than the concentration camps, yet is still important. "Kirschner allows her mother's poignant story to emerge from these heartbreaking missives, filling in the gaps with a dignified, quietly eloquent connecting narrative," reported a Kirkus Reviews writer. A Publishers Weekly contributor described the book as a "moving account," praising how Kirschner "has skillfully crafted her mother's documents."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 15, 2006, George Cohen, review of Sala's Gift: My Mother's Holocaust Story, p. 19.

Chronicle of Higher Education, April 23, 2004, Goldie Blumenstyk, "A Mother's Gift: Hidden Letters from the Holocaust."

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2006, review of Sala's Gift, p. 823.

New York Times, March 11, 2006, Kathryn Shattuck, "Bringing One Woman's Holocaust Experience to Life," p. B7.

New York Times Book Review, November 12, 2006, Blake Eskin, "Letters from Hell," review of Sala's Gift, p. 53.

Publishers Weekly, August 21, 2006, review of Sala's Gift, p. 58.

ONLINE

Bookreporter.com,http://www.bookreporter.com/ (March 4, 2007), Sarah Rachel Egelman, review of Sala's Gift, and biography of Ann Kirschner.

Girl Geeks,http://www.girlgeeks.com/ (March 4, 2007), brief biography of Ann Kirschner.

Holocaust and Genocide Conference Web site,http://holocaust.tjsl.edu/ (March 4, 2007), brief biography of Ann Kirschner.

Jewish Women's Archive Web site,http://www.jwa.org/ (March 4, 2007), brief biography of Ann Kirschner.

Princeton University Web site,http://www.princeton.edu/ (November 17, 2004), Anne Ruderman, "Sala's Story: Ann Kirschner '78 Brings Her Mother's Hidden Letters from the Holocaust into Public View."

Sala Garncarz Kirschner Collection Web site,http://www.letterstosala.org (March 4, 2007), biography of Ann Kirschner.

Sala's Gift Web site,http://www.salasgift.com (March 4, 2007).