Volume 84, Issue 20 Web Edition
SERVING BREVARD COLLEGE SINCE 1935
Feiyuary 20, 2019
Holocaust survivor
Walter Blass visits
Brevard College
By Carmen Boone
Copy Editor
Walter P. Blass, an 88 year-old Holocaust
survivor, came to Brevard College on Monday,
Feb. 18 to speak about his experience during
the Holocaust. He spoke in Ingram Auditorium
at 7 p.m.
The presentation was titled “Refugee, World
Citizen, Holocaust Survivor and Storyteller.” He
began by talking about his childhood.
He was bom in 1930, three years before Adolf
Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933.
Hitler decreed that no Jews were allowed to
work in law, medicine, as university professors
or in government.
Walter’s father, Richard Blass, asked him if
he wanted to go on a business trip with him
to Bmssels when Walter was five. Once they
arrived, Walter’s father took him into a place
surrounded by a big iron fence. Walter was left
there alone for three weeks while his father went
to get his mother. If all three of them had tried
to flee Germany at the same time, they would
have been caught because of suspicion.
On May 10,1940, Walter felt what he thought
was an earthquake. He was told to go down and
hide in a cellar because air raids were happening
in their area. Walter found out at breakfast the
next day that his father had been arrested at 8
a.m. that same morning. Four days later, the
rumor was that all the men who were arrested
were piled into a box car and taken across the
French frontier. No one knew where they were
after that.
After that, Walter, his mother and a couple
they were living with were arrested and taken to
jail. The two women were sent to a concentration
camp. Walter was sent to a home for delinquent
children. He stayed there for four months, all
the while receiving postcards and letters from
his mother.
Refugee, World Citizen, Holocaust
Survivor and Storyteller
Walter P. Blass
Walter Blass is also a successful business man and
advocates for liberal arts colleges.
One day, he read that she had been liberated by
the French. While in the camp, she learned that
Walter’s father was in a camp on the other side of
France. She decided to go get her husband out of
the concentration camp. Walter was then picked
up by his father from the Veterans Hospital next
door to where the home was.
While his parents continued to travel, Walter
lived with a family in Masai who had three
girls, one of which was his age. His mother had
a acquired a visa to the Dominican Republic
and his father was sent to another concentration
camp north of Masai.
Richard Blass learned that men were going
to be transferred to Gurse and climbed over the
fence to escape before the transport. He hid on
See 'Holocaust survivor Walter Blass' on
page 3
Claridl»
removed in
Scholarship
Day prep
By Jeni Welch
Editor in Chief
Scholarship Day offers an opportunity for
prospective new students the chance to tour the
college and interview for different scholarships
offered from Brevard College. Last Friday, Feb.
15, the BC Admissions office began setting
up the event in different areas on campus for
Saturday’s visitors.
Part of the process of setting up for the
admissions event is adding chairs to the buildings
and tidying things up, which Admissions
personnel say includes removing the clutter
of The Clarion newspapers, other magazines,
publications and selected posters. According to
Director of Admissions and Financial Aid David
Volrath, this is a protocol that the college has
followed for past events.
“We typically remove anything that is laying
around or loose as we need the spaces to be as
neat and clean as possible so that we make a
good first impression on these future Brevard
College students,” Volrath said in an email on
Friday. The college was expecting more than 100
students to visit campus with their families on
Saturday for Scholarship Day, he wrote.
English professor Alyse Bensel assisted with
interviews at Scholarship Day on Saturday. “I
noticed that all of the issues of The Clarion had
been removed from the building [McLarty-
Goodson], with the exceptions of an issue
behind the glass display case,” Bensel said. “I
was mostly confused, as I had never noticed
The Clarion missing during other admissions
events.”
However, on Friday afternoon, a comment was
made to Mary Harris, administrative assistant for
the Humanities and Social Sciences divisions
in MG, suggesting that in addition to the issue
of tidiness, last week’s Clarion may have been
removed in part because of the content.
See 'Clarion removal' on page 3