Roman R. Kent (18 April 1929 – 21 May 2021) was a Polish Holocaust survivor. He was a

Łódź Ghetto The Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto (after the Nazi German name for Łódź) was a Nazi ghetto established by the German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the Invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of Ge ...

and

Auschwitz Concentration Camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

inmate. He was president of the

International Auschwitz Committee The International Auschwitz Committee was formed by survivors of the Auschwitz death camp in 1952 for the support of the survivors and to fight racism and anti-Semitism. The committee's mission was to maintain contact with survivors on both side ...

. Kent died in New York City, United States on 21 May 2021, aged 92.

Works

Roman Kent wrote his autobiography entitled "Courage Was My Only Option: The Autobiography of Roman Kent" which was published in 2008 in New York by Vantage Press. He wrote the children's book "My dog Lala" about Lala, his much beloved she-dog while being a young boy in

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

, being forced into the

Łódź ghetto The Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto (after the Nazi German name for Łódź) was a Nazi ghetto established by the German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the Invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of Ge ...

with his family after Poland was attacked and occupied by Nazi Germany. It's the story about the love between a boy and his dog, who was taken from him by the German occupiers.

Commemoration

Based on Kent's children's book "My dog Lala" and his autobiography "Courage Was My Only Option", Polish storyteller Beata Frankowska has prepared the story "Lala. The Story of a Miracle" about Kent's childhood in Łódź before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and family's stay in the ghetto, and the boy's and his siblings' friendship with dog Lala. It premiered at the 18th International Storytelling Festival in November 2023 in

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

with accordeon player and singer Robert Lipka providing the accompaniment for Frankowska's storytelling and the Folkovo group joining him in a

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

and a

Yiddish song Yiddish song is a general description of several genres of music sung in Yiddish which includes songs of Yiddish theatre, Klezmer songs, and "Yiddish art song" after the model of the German Lied and French mélodie. The Yiddish language and song F ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kent, Roman 1929 births 2021 deaths Polish emigrants to the United States Łódź Ghetto inmates Auschwitz concentration camp survivors International Auschwitz Committee members Officers Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany