The daughter of two Holocaust survivors will share her parents’ poignant account during a program Tuesday in Fox Chapel.
Deborah Leuchter Stueber of Blawnox will be the guest speaker at the Holocaust Remembrance event, hosted by the Fox Chapel Area affiliate of the American Association of University Women.
The daughter of Kurt and Edith Leuchter, Stueber will share their experiences and horrors they witnessed, including the violent Kristallnacht attacks of 1938.
Stueber is an ambassador for the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh and a speaker for the center’s Generations outreach program. She is dedicated to ensuring her parents’ legacy lives on while addressing the stigma of prejudice and anti-Semitism that is still prevalent, she said.
During a past presentation at Cooper-Siegel Community Library, Stueber said her parents spent their childhoods in Europe hiding from Nazis during World War II and found one another in the United States years later.
“I think now, more than ever, it’s important to educate people on the Holocaust,” she said at the time. “Not just students, but adults as well. … One day there will be no more Holocaust survivors left, and I’m their legacy. It’s my torch to bear, and I want to make sure their experience and story lives on forever.”
Edith Leuchter was born in Bruchsal, Germany, and was deported to the Gurs internment camp in southwestern France.
Kurt Leuchter was born in Vienna, Austria and spent time at the Camp des Milles internment camp.
An organization called Children’s Aid Society saved the pair from the camps and placed them in an orphanage in France where they met in 1942 as young teens.
Both emigrated to the United States separately in 1946 and met up by chance in New York City in 1947.
Kurt Leuchter was drafted into the Army to fight in the Korean War and worked as an aerospace engineer for Grumman Aerospace on the guidance navigation system for the lunar landing modules of Apollo 11 and 13.
The couple lives in Florida.
Born and raised on Long Island, Stueber studied elementary education at the State University of Oneonta, New York.
She moved to Pittsburgh in 1991 and began volunteering for the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, sharing her parents’ perspective with schools, universities, churches, synagogues, libraries and civic organizations.
Stueber has lived in Blawnox for 22 years.
The event Tuesday is free and open to the public.
It is scheduled for 10 a.m. at Faith United Methodist Church, 261 West Chapel Ridge Road.
