Joe Lewinsohn was born in Berlinchen, Germany on May 16, 1937. On Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938), the family’s store was vandalized. His father Edwin and 10,000 other Jewish men were arrested and spent weeks in Buchenwald, a German concentration camp. In 1939, scared for their lives, the Lewinsohns fled Germany for Shanghai, their only option. For six years, Joe’s family shared a room with three other refugee families in the decrepit Shanghai ghetto. When the war ended, they went to Chile to live alongside over 10,000 Jews who had spent the wartime years there.
In 1949, Joe and his family came to Seattle. Joe graduated from Garfield High School and joined the Army. Upon his discharge, he attended the University of Washington and began a teaching career in the Seattle School District. Since 2017, Joe has been a member of the Holocaust Center for Humanity's Speakers Bureau.
Special thanks to our community partner for this program, Moishe House Seattle.
