KNOXVILLE — Holocaust survivor Alfred Münzer will speak on Monday, March 31, at King's Hardin Valley campus in Knoxville at 7 p.m. The event is part of the Buechner (Beek-ner) Institute's 2013-14 Lecture Series and is co-sponsored by the Bristol Herald Courier. Münzer will also speak at King University’s Memorial Chapel in Bristol, Tenn., at 9:15 a.m.

”Each year, King University joins with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in honoring and remembering the victims of the Holocaust by inviting one of the survivors to speak on several of our campuses,” says Dr. Errol Rohr, interim chaplain, emeritus professor of Philosophy, and director of King's Italy Study Program. This long-standing program seeks to promote the cause of human dignity around the world, and educate present and future generations in the agendas of peace. This year’s speaker is a Holocaust survivor whose sisters were killed in Auschwitz and whose father died shortly after being liberated from one of the Nazi death camps. Münzer and his mother immigrated to the United States in 1958.

Münzer was just an infant when his family was forced to split up and go into hiding in 1942. While he remained well-hidden with a family friend for more than three years, his two older sisters were eventually deported to Auschwitz and exterminated three days after their arrival. His parents were deported to Auschwitz in 1943, where they were separated and sent to other labor camps.

Münzer’s father spent the remainder of the war in two Austrian concentration camps, then died two months after being liberated. His mother survived her stay in various camps, and after being liberated was repatriated in 1945 to Holland, where she was reunited with her son. Thirteen years later, mother and son immigrated to the United States.

Today, Münzer is president of the medical staff at Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park, Md. He is board certified in internal medicine and pulmonary disease medicine.