JACK FUCHS (Jakub Fuks)

Coronel Diaz 2241, Dpto. 10D
1425 Capital Federal
Argentina
Tel.: (54)(11)4822-1745
Email: jfuchs@arnet.com.ar

Biography

Jack Fuchs was born in 1924 in Lodz, Poland.  His father was a shoemaker and his mother was a seamstress.  He had a brother (Abraham) born 1920, a sister (Sarah) born 1928, and another sister  (Java) born 1935.  Jack was 15 years old when the ghetto was established in Lodz, where he lived with his family until they were deported to the concentration camp in Auschwitz in 1944.  It was there that he was separated from his family, and later transported to the camp in Dachau, from where he was “liberated” by the American army in April 1945.  After spending a year in a hospital in Germany, Jack emigrated to New York in 1946 with the help of  the International Rescue Relief Committee.  There, Jack was assisted by the Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Labor Committee and also participated in the YIVO, the Association for New Arrivals, and the Jewish Workman’s Circle. 

In 1960, he settled in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he had some relatives.  There he met his wife, Yvonne Wurmser, a Holocaust survivor from France, whom he married in 1964.  Their daughter, Marianne, is now 35, and she is married to Alejandro Kijak.  They have three daughters – Florencia, age 18, Debora, age 14, and Milena age 11.  Today, Jack lives alone, and his apartment has become a center for information about the Holocaust for students and journalists.

Activities

Jack has dedicated the last 16 years to writing and speaking about his experiences during the Holocaust and reflections on the Second World War and its consequences.  He has been invited to speak in Jewish and Catholic schools, and  in universities all over the country. He has written articles referring to the Shoah which have been published in the Jewish and Argentine press, including Pagina/12, La Nacion, and El Clarin.  In 1995, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, La Nacion y El Dia (of La Plata), published his testimony on the front page. He has also appeared on television and radio, and interviewed by journalists in the Argentine dailies, Clarin, La Nacion, Pagina/12, El Cronista, including Norma Morandini, Jose Ignacio Lopez, Oswaldo Quiroga, and Maria Esther Gilio.

In 1995, he published a book, Tiempo de Recordar (Time To Remember), co-written with Liliana Isod, and presented in May 8, 1995 by the Argentine Commission for Human Rights. 

In 2006, he published a second book Dilemas de la Memoria (Memory’s Dilemmas), which has a collection of articles appeared in different newspapers in the last 15 years.

Other activities include:

• Honorary professor, ORT School
• Honorary member, Hacoaj
• Representative in Argentina for Yad Vashem
• Member of the International Raoul Wallenberg Committee
• Member of Argentine delegation to first Yiddish Congress in Moscow, 1992
• Intensive courses for one month in the Yad Vashem Center for Documentation, Jerusalem 1992
• Survivors’ commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the fall of Nazism in the Yad Vashem Museum, Jerusalem, 1985
• Reunion of Holocaust Survivors commemorating 40 years of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, 1983
• Ceremony for the placing of the foundation stone of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, 1983

A documentary film made by a young filmmaker about JACK FUCHS and his life after the war, called

"the tree in the wall"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOXHxr6HVVw