Distinguished Alumni Award Winner Speaks about Jewish Memorial

David Wluka at memorial wall — David Wluka commissioned a memorial wall in Nowy Dwór, Poland, on which to mount the Jewish headstones the Nazis used to fortify the roads for their tanks. *Photo by Anita Wluka Davis*

In April, David Wluka (’66, CAS’68, GRS’70) returned to CGS to speak to freshmen about the Nowy Dwór Jewish Memorial he established in honor of his father, Icek, who survived three years at Auschwitz.

During a visit to his father’s hometown of Nowy Dwór, Poland, Wluka found that the Nazis had destroyed the Jewish cemetery and used the headstones to fortify the roads for their tanks. Wluka and Nowy Dwór’s citizens are working together to excavate the streets and have so far unearthed 125 headstones, which are now displayed at the cemetery site.

Hosted by the Social Sciences division, Wluka’s lecture at CGS tied into the freshmen core class Modernization of the Western World (now Modernization: Politics, Economics, and Culture), in which the students were studying World War II and the Holocaust. “They were touched by his talk,” says Susan Lee, chair and master lecturer in social sciences. “Some came up to him afterward, and one student was in tears. I heard later from Mr. Wluka that she was a Maori student who identified the sufferings of her own people with the Holocaust.”

Wluka spoke “movingly about his father’s experiences in his home village and at Auschwitz,” says Lee. “It was clear that he felt a powerful sense of obligation to commemorate the suffering and losses from the Holocaust, especially in his ancestral village.”

Wluka will be honored in the fall with this year’s CGS Distinguished Alumni Award for his dedication to peace and tolerance, for his commitment to preserving the history of the Jewish people of Poland, and for his loyalty to his alma mater.