JANUARY 19 • 2023 | 21

TOP TO BOTTOM: Doug Harvey and Sophie
Klisman at an FIDF event in 2019. Lori’s
husband Jeff, Lori, Sophie, her son, Mark,
and his wife, Anne, celebrate Sophie’s 90th
birthday.

it, and one of her best friends died
and never spoke about it, she felt
an obligation to finally open up and
share her story.”
After the 2016 Poland trip, Klisman
returned in 2019 to be a survivor
speaker for FIDF’s mission to Poland
and Israel.
Coverage of that trip in the Detroit
News gained the attention of Doug
Harvey of Sterling Heights, a U.S.
Army veteran who was part of
the 84th Infantry Division, which
liberated Salzwedel concentration
camp, where Sophie was, in April
1945.
Klisman and Harvey reunited,
and ever since they
periodically get
together to tell their
story. They’ll be
reuniting once again
on International
Holocaust
Remembrance Day.
“Doug is 98 and
still remarkable —
he drives; he’s still
cognitively very
alert. Same with
my mother at 93.
When there’s an
opportunity that comes up
and they can do it together, it’s just
amazing,” Ellis said.
Klisman and her older sister,
Felicia, were the only two members
of their entire family to survive the
Holocaust.
“My mom and her sister survived
three concentration camps together
[Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen
at the same time as Anne Frank and
Salzwedel],” Ellis said. “She says it
was like a miracle because there were
so many near-death experiences and
illnesses.”
Ellis is in the training process right
now at The HC of becoming a “next-
generation speaker,” as many of the
survivors are, unfortunately, passing
away or are no longer able to speak.
“I want to keep my parent’s legacy
alive, so I will speak at the Zekelman

Holocaust Center as soon as my
training is complete,” Ellis said. “I feel
like it’s something I’m destined to do.
I’m named after my grandmother.
I want to keep educating the world
— just like my mom does — to
hopefully prevent more genocide and
hatred.”
Ellis is a retired educator/speech
and language pathologist and now
an author. She has written books
about the Holocaust, diversity and
acceptance, friendship, kindness,
inclusivity and more.
Ellis will be distributing copies
of the book she wrote about her
mother’s life (4,456 Miles: A Survivor’s
Search for Closure) to
interested congregants
at the church for free.
Ellis is always looking
for donors who would
want to contribute to
purchasing books, and
in return she advertises
their business by placing
a sticker on the front
page of the book that
states the book was
generously donated by
them with their address
and phone number.
“It helps to bring in
business to companies, and they help
to educate others,” Ellis said.
Ellis is also in the process of
getting her mother’s book into school
districts because a lot of the high
schools have mandatory genocide
training in their history curriculum.
So far, the International Academy in
Bloomfield Hills and Royal Oak High
School have the books, and she’s
waiting to hear back from some other
local school districts.
“I just want to get it out there
for people to know that it’s part of
history, and these are local people
who have survived,” Ellis said. “That’s
my mission right now.”

You can contact Lori Ellis at silkspeech@aol.com. If

you want to donate, buy books and/or learn more,

visit www.loriklismanellis.com.