© 2024 Iowa Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

An Iowa author writes about one of the last living Schindler's list survivors

Talk of Iowa, hosted by Charity Nebbe

A newly published book focuses on the life of a Holocaust survivor who emigrated with her parents to Iowa.

Celina Karp Biniaz and her parents were among more than 1,200 Jewish men and women saved from death by Oskar Schindler's list during World War II.

After the war, Karp Biniaz's family found a home in Iowa where she finished secondary school and graduated from Grinnell College.

On this episode of Talk of Iowa, we listen back to a conversation host Charity Nebbe had with Karp Biniaz in 2017 detailing the German invasion of her homeland of Poland when she was eight years old. She endured the Holocaust as the Nazis forced her family into a ghetto, and was moved to the Plaszów concentration camp after that.

She then spent several weeks at the Auschwitz concentration camp before being sent to safety at Schindler's factory in Czechoslovakia.

Later in the episode, we talk with author Bill Friedricks about his book, Saved by Schindler: The Life of Celina Karp Biniaz.

Friedricks will discuss his book at an author signing on December 10 in West Des Moines.

Guests:

  • Celina Karp Biniaz, one of the last living survivors from Schindler's List
  • Bill Friedricks, professor emeritus and former director of the Iowa History Center, Simpson College
Holocaust survivor Celina Karp Biniaz
Holocaust survivor Celina Karp Biniaz

Charity Nebbe is the host of IPR's Talk of Iowa
Samantha McIntosh is a talk show producer at Iowa Public Radio. Prior to IPR, Samantha worked as a reporter for radio stations in southeast and west central Iowa under M&H Broadcasting, and before that she was a weekend music host for GO 96.3 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.