Marion Blumenthal Lazan

Marion Blumenthal Lazan was born to a well-to-do Jewish family in Bremen, Germany. In 1938, she was a small child when she, her brother Albert, and their parents fled to The Netherlands after the Nazi pogrom known as Kristallnacht. As they awaited emigration to the USA in Rotterdam, Holland was invaded by Germany in World War II. The Blumenthals attempted to live in hiding, but when she was nine years old, they were caught and deported via the Westerbork transit camp and then to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. At the end of the war, with the Allies closing in, Marion and her family were put on a crowded train by the Germans. Sick with typhus, she also had a burned leg that was severely infected. The family was liberated by the Red Army, and Marion's leg was treated and saved. However, her father died of typhus six weeks later. Marion, her mother, and brother returned to The Netherlands, where she restarted her formal education. In 1948, they finally were allowed to use their boat tickets from 10 years earlier to emigrate to the USA, where they settled in Peoria, Illinois. Marion, now age 13, went to school and rapidly learned English, her third language after Dutch and Hebrew. She graduated from Peoria Central High School in 1953. That same year, at age 18, she married Nathaniel Lazan, with whom she had three children. She worked as a hospital and community volunteer and went on to train as a medical assistant. She has been active as a public speaker throughout the USA, Germany, the UK, and Israel. Marion often draws parallels with her experiences and those of Anne Frank, who also was detained in Westerbork and sent to Bergen-Belsen. Marion's memoir Four Perfect Pebbles: A True Story of the Holocaust, written with Lila Perl, was first published in 1996. The 2003 documentary film Marion's Triumph also tells her story.