Arizona Holocaust Survivor "Graduates" High School Posted: May 11, 2006

May 5 had always held a single meaning for Holocaust survivor Carl Ofisher. 

It was the date of his liberation from the last of the five Nazi concentration camps in which he had been held. Carl Ofisher had survived life in the Lodz ghetto, the camps and three death marches over the course of the war. And then came liberation. He was 19 years old. He had lost his entire family, his innocence and four years of his life. 

But thanks to the students at Marcos de Niza High School in Tempe, Arizona, that date henceforth will forever hold another special meaning for Mr. Ofisher.

On May 5, 2006, Mr. Ofisher was honored by Marcos de Niza High School as an honorary graduate. Mr. Ofisher has been speaking to student groups in Arizona for almost 20 years, often in connection with Holocaust education and awareness activities sponsored by the Arizona Regional Office of the Anti-Defamation League.

The "graduation" ceremony, which was initiated by the students themselves, attracted a standing-room-only crowd of nearly 500 to the school's auditorium, the site of many of Mr. Ofisher's compelling talks to students. The audience was comprised of students (including the entire senior class in caps and gowns), friends, fellow survivors, members of the governing Board and the Superintendent of the Tempe Unified School District, of the district and the entire staff of the Arizona Regional Office of ADL.

Paul Wieser, Director of ADL's Braun Holocaust Institute, spoke of the high school experiences--including graduation--of which Mr. Ofisher had been deprived as a result of the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe and campaign of genocide. And he spoke of the impact Mr. Ofisher has had on so many young people, despite his own brushes with evil and the bitterness of his own personal experience.

Now May 5th has two very special meanings for Carl Ofisher.