Thursday, October 1, 2026
Fourth and sixth grade students at Centre Avenue Elementary School attended a Holocaust education presentation on Jan. 29 featuring survivor Arnold Newfield, who visited through the Kupferberg Holocaust Center at Queensborough Community College.
Newfield shared his family’s traumatic journey of survival, fleeing Austria for the Netherlands in 1938. He was born in 1942 in Westerbork, a transit camp, and at age three was separated from his father, who was sent to Buchenwald, while he, his mother, and two brothers were deported to Ravensbrück.
Newfield shared his family’s experience in detail, along with their planned reunification in the Netherlands. Following the end of the war, Newfield and his family came back together, eventually immigrated to the United States and settled on the lower East Side of Manhattan.
Centre Avenue students, who have been studying the Holocaust in class, asked questions following the presentation and presented Newfield with handmade thank-you cards.
Newfield concluded by encouraging students to ask family members about their histories, avoid living with anger, and participate in voting when they become eligible.
