FAIRFIELD, Conn. (April 09, 2025)—Fairfield University will host a Holocaust Remembrance Service on Thursday, April 24, at 5 p.m. in the Barone Campus Center Dogwood Room, featuring keynote speaker and Holocaust survivor Peter Haslund, PhD. The event is free and open to the public.
Dr. Haslund will share his personal story of survival, reflecting on the profound impact of the Holocaust and the moral dilemmas faced by those who lived through it. He will explore the inner conflict he and others have experienced in reconciling the past with modern-day Germany, emphasizing the complexities of memory, justice, and reconciliation. Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Haslund was just four years old when his mother made the heartbreaking decision to leave him behind as she fled to Sweden in 1943. He was taken to a rural farm for safety, where he remained hidden during Nazi occupation. “I became a little 4-year-old farmer, and I had my hiding place for times when our farm was visited by German soldiers,” Haslund recalls. “It is a story about the courage it must have required to violate German law by keeping me in the hay-loft.” Reunited with his family in 1947, he later immigrated to the United States in 1949, beginning a new chapter of resilience and hope.
The remembrance service will also include readings and musical performances by clergy and members of the Fairfield University community, offering a moment of reflection and tribute to the lives lost and the survivors who have carried their stories forward.
Fairfield University is a modern, Jesuit Catholic University, rooted in one of the world’s oldest intellectual and spiritual traditions. More than 6,000 undergraduate and graduate students from 44 states, including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and 46 countries, are enrolled in the University’s five schools. In the spirit of rigorous and sympathetic inquiry into all dimensions of human experience, Fairfield welcomes students from diverse backgrounds to share ideas and engage in open conversations. The University is located in the heart of a region where the future takes shape, on a stunning campus on the Connecticut coast just an hour from New York City.