Otto Weidt — A Blind Hero

11 AM LOS ANGELES • 2 PM NEW YORK

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Otto Weidt was a visually impaired Holocaust rescuer who was named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. He owned a workshop in Berlin that manufactured brushes and brooms created by visually impaired workers, many of whom were Jewish. During the Nazi period he found hiding places for his Jewish employees, with the help of his sighted assistant Alice Licht. When Licht herself was deported to Auschwitz, Weidt traveled to the concentration camp, alone, to try to save her. A unique story of love and determination!

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THE SCHEDULE

⇒ September 8-11, watch the film A Blind Hero: The Love of Otto Weidt on your home device. A link will be provided to all who register.

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WATCH THE TRAILER

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MEET THE SPEAKERS

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Yermi Brenner, born in Israel in 1980, is the grandson of Alice Licht, a Jewish Berliner who supported Otto Weidt’s efforts to rescue Jews from the Nazis and used Weidt’s workshop as a hideout. Yermi is a marketing communication professional with a background in international journalism. He wrote about his grandmother’s heroic Holocaust survival story and the role of Otto Weidt in a personal essay for the book A Place They Call Home: Reclaiming Citizenship. In 2022, Yermi resettled in Israel after having lived for eight years in Berlin, and rejoined – together with his wife and toddler – the community he grew up in, Kibbutz Hatzor, which is now home to Alice Licht’s son, grandsons and great-grandchildren.

Ariane Kwasigroch works at the Jewish Museum of Berlin and has been working for more than 20 years on the topics of collaboration, education & digital media in memorial sites and museums. She was involved in the founding and development of the museum devoted to Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind in Berlin. Since 2010, she has been involved in various projects at the Jewish Museum: the outreach program “Jewish Museum Berlin on.tour” for schools, the development of the children’s museum ANOHA, the children’s advisory board and the development of the website https://anoha.de/en.  She is inspired by the story of Otto Weidt and other rescuers.

Dr. Mordecai Paldiel headed the Righteous Among the Nations Department at Yad Vashem from 1982-2007. Some of his books on rescue during the Holocaust include The Path of the Righteous, Sheltering the Jews, Saving the Jews, Diplomat Heroes of the Holocaust, and Saving One’s Own. He taught at Yeshiva University and Touro College and serves on the Board of the Sousa Mendes Foundation. Thanks to his efforts, there is now a square named for Aristides de Sousa Mendes in Jerusalem. He is a member of the B’nai B’rith committee in Israel honoring Jewish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust.

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Registration for this program is closed.