Film Screening and Discussion - Big Sonia

National Archives at Kansas City
Kansas City, MO

Sonia Warshawski is one of the last remaining Holocaust survivors living in the Kansas City area, and one of the only survivors who speaks publicly about her wartime experience. Sonia’s enormous personality and fragile 4-foot-8-inch frame mask the horrors she endured. At 15, Warshawski watched her mother disappear behind gas chamber doors, and her teenage years were a blur of concentration camps and death marches. On liberation day, she was accidentally shot through the chest, yet miraculously survived. Warshawski is the ultimate survivor — a bridge between cultures and generations.

The event will begin with a short performance by the Park University International Center for Music’s Ben Sayevich, professor of music/violin, and his wife, Lolita Lisovskaya-Sayevich, director of collaborative piano. The duo will perform “Nigun” from the suite “Baal-Shem: Three Pictures of Chassidic Life” composed by Ernest Bloch and “Schindler’s List for Violin and Piano” composed by John Williams. The film screening will begin at approximately 6:15 p.m. and will be followed by a panel discussion at approximately 7:45 p.m. Panelists will include Rabbi Doug Alpert from Congregation Kol Ami in Kansas City, Mo., and Brian Cowley, Ph.D., Park University professor of psychology who has expertise in the Holocaust, and Jennifer Tavernaro, an educational adviser on the film who has been teaching Holocaust education and Warshawski’s story for the past 10 years in her classroom at Lakewood Middle School in the Blue Valley (Kan.) School District. Tavernaro’s students are highlighted in the film.

The screening takes place two days before Yom HaShoah, also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the lives and heroism of Jewish people who died in the Holocaust. The event is presented in partnership with the International Relations Council, Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and Park University. This program will take place at Park University, 8700 NW River Park Drive, Parkville, MO. Reservations are requested for this free program.