Lake Oswego Public Library Presents


In Partnership with Lakewood Center for the Arts

Alter Weiner Holocaust Survivor

Monday, February 9, 2015: 6 PM reception, 7 PM program,  at Lakewood Center for the Arts
Free Event – No Ticket Needed, Open to the Public

6:00 PM French & German Wine Tasting

Join us before the presention at 6 PM to celebrate Europe with a special tasting of wine from France and Germany, 
presented by World Class Wines. This event will feature a Riesling and a red French wine with French cheeses.

7:00 PM Program – Alter Weiner Holocaust Survivor

Holocaust survivor and author of From a Name to a Number, Alter Weiner, will share his experiences as a young man during WWII. Mr. Wiener’s father was brutally murdered on September 11, 1939, by German invaders of Poland. Alter was then a boy of 13. At age 15, he was deported to Blechhammer, a forced labor camp for Jews, in Germany. Mr. Weiner subsequently survived five different camps. Upon liberation by the Russian Army on May 9, 1945, he discovered most of his family was gone. Through sharing his experience of a time in our history which must never be forgotten, Mr. Weiner’s message is ultimately one of tolerance and strength.



This event is presented in partnership with Lakewood Center for the Arts.

ABOUT THE 2015 LAKE OSWEGO READS BOOK

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure’s agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.

In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.

Doerr’s gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work.