Author to Speak of Father's Wartime Experiences at Holocaust Remembrance Event

When Morey Kogul was in high school, he took a class field trip, accompanied by his father, Van Wolf Kogul, to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

“They had a camera stand up for any survivor to provide testimony on their experiences in the war,” recalls Morey Kogul, now 45. “So I asked him to tell his story.”

Now, it’s Kogul’s turn to tell his late father’s story.

A resident of Columbia’s River High area, Kogul and his daughter, Hannah, will speak at Howard County’s annual Yom HaShoah Holocaust Remembrance Day Commemoration tonight, Apr. 27.

The virtual presentation will begin at 6 with an online gallery featuring Holocaust artifacts from local community members, survivor video testimonials, a local authors’ book gallery, the traveling exhibition “State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda” and student essay winners from Howard County schools on “Keeping the Memory Alive — Sharing Responsibility.”

The program’s memorial service will begin at 7 with a candle-lighting ceremony and speakers who will share stories of the Holocaust, including Rabbi Craig H. Axler of Temple Isaiah in Fulton.

Among the presenters will be Kogul, author of “Running Breathless: An Untold Story of WWII and the Holocaust” (Mascot Books). In the book, he tells the story of his father’s life as a refugee fleeing from the Nazi invasion of Poland to the former Soviet Union.

A native of the Polish town of Dubno (now in western Ukraine), Van Wolf Kogul later served as a Soviet soldier fighting the Germans. He eventually relocated to Colorado, served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and became the owner of a dental laboratory.

He was the only member of his immediate family to survive the war.

A father of four and grandfather of five, Van Wolf Kogul died in Denver in February of 2014 at the age of 91.

“The publishing of the memoir was a fulfillment of a promise to my dad,” Morey Kogul says.

Kogul admits he did not know much about his father’s life during World War II until after visiting the Holocaust museum in D.C. as a teenager.

That same day, he asked his father if he would be willing to be interviewed by him. Van Wolf Kogul reluctantly agreed.

“I set up a tape recorder, and for four days I interviewed him,” Morey Kogul says. “It was an incredibly difficult conversation. I wasn’t prepared at all for what he said, but I promised him I would write the book.”

After his father died, Kogul, an urban planner, took off eight months from work to write the book. He says he did not want “Running Breathless” to be a typical war memoir, but something “accessible” to a contemporary audience.

“I wanted the reader to hear the story from my dad,” he says. “I wanted to remove myself, and the story is told just as my father told me.”

Not long after its publication in 2018, “Running Breathless” became part of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s archives.

“I want to prompt further inquiry and research [into the Holocaust] by portraying the significance of my father’s experience” Kogul says. “Collectively, I hope it promotes conversations between those who have past experiences in a way that’s engaging and positively connect.”

When reading “Running Breathless,” Kogul says he hope readers — especially young ones — contemplate the stories and histories of their own families.

“I ask the teens that I talk with to talk to their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents about their background, because at some point that chance will expire,” he says. “For older audiences, don’t wait to be asked. Set aside some time with your sons, grandsons and nephews to talk about your history. It can build bridges to your roots because if we have better connections to our past, then we can have a better connection with our peers.”

Kogul says the themes of family and being Jewish were extremely important to his father, especially due to the fact that he never got an opportunity to say goodbye to many of his loved ones in Europe.

“My father loved the idea of Jewish culture and the idea of positive connections through stories,” Kogul says. “The morals and principles of Judaism can shape the type of person that I aspire to be.”

Kogul says he has tried to pass on those values to his daughter, Hannah, who learned about the Holocaust at age 9 after discovering that her grandfather was a survivor.

“I was shocked to find out that I knew someone that survived this tragedy,” recalls Hannah, now a sophomore at River Hill High School. “It was unique in being able to have someone that could tell me about it. My friends sometimes don’t know the details of these events, and it’s important for the younger generation to speak out.”

Howard County’s annual Yom HaShoah Commemoration is presented by the Howard County Board of Rabbis and the Jewish Federation of Howard County. For information, visit jewishhowardcounty.org/yomhashoah.

Nicholas Elliott is a Jmore staff intern.