These days I am thinking of two Holocaust survivors.

I met with one today: 86 year-old Hedy Epstein and I had lunch at Blackberry Cafe in Clayton.  The other is receiving an honorary doctorate tomorrow at Washington University: 82 year-old Elie Wiesel, who will also give the commencement address.

Mr. Wiesel and Ms. Epstein have in common the central experience of their lives: their families destroyed by the Nazi genocide.  He survived the Auschwitz death camp, and she left Germany in 1939 on a Kindertransport to Great Britain.