Presented by Henry Michalski

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Torn Lilacs charts the journey of the author’s parents, Joseph (Joska) and Felicia (Fela) Michalski, a young Jewish couple from a small Polish town, whose path of survival during the era of the Holocaust took them to Ukraine, Siberia, Kazakhstan, and the United States. Michalski portrays his parents’ struggles of loss, narrow escape, separation, capture, imprisonment, stark betrayal, and eventual freedom.

Henry Michalski was born in Dhzambul, Kazakhstan on August 3, 1945, between V-E Day in Europe and the bombing of Hiroshima. He lived for two years in a displaced persons camp in Bavaria until the U.S. agreed to take in a limited number of refugees. He arrived at Ellis Island with his parents and brother in 1949, and the family eventually settled in San Francisco. Henry graduated from San Francisco State University and taught history in the Napa schools. Over the course of his career he raised a family, traveled, wrote, and moderated TV and radio programs in Napa. Michalski is proud to have honored his parents, bringing meaning and purpose to their suffering with the publication of Torn Lilacs.