ROBERT BROCKMANN

SCHENECTADY –Congregation Agudat Achim will host a free Zoom program with the leaders of the Jewish community of Bolivia who are authorities on the history of a man considered the Schindler of Bolivia, Moritz Hochschild, on Thursday, March 20 at 7:30 p.m.

Dr. Ricardo Udler, spokesperson for the Bolivian Jewish community, was born in La Paz, Bolivia. He is the son of a French-Polish mother, who arrived to Bolivia in 1942-1943. Regina Cymerman was a member of the French and Spanish resistance who obtained a visa to emigrate to Bolivia. Her parents and a sister, out of four siblings, perished in the Holocaust. On Udler’s father’s side, José Udler’s family emigrated to Argentina during the first pogroms in 1913 in Odessa, now Ukraine. Udler’s parents, José and Regina, met in Bolivia and worked in commerce. They had two sons and a daughter.

Udler is a gynecologist trained in Argentina and Germany, with a specialty in infertility. He is married to Sonia Friedheim, also born in La Paz.

Robert Brockmann was born in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He is a journalist, writer, translator, professor, and consultant in strategic communications. He is the author of seven books on history and journalistic chronicles, including Escape a los Andes, which he co wrote with Raúl Peñaranda, on the life Hochschild, who helped to rescue as many as 22,000 Jews from Nazi Germany. He is a fellow of the Hemispheric Center for Defense Studies in Washington, D.C. He was communications officer for the United Nations in Bolivia, deputy director of the newspaper La Razón, president of the Association of International Correspondents, and vice president of the Association of Journalists of La Paz

Brockmann studied communications in La Paz, journalism at Arizona State University, and completed postgraduate studies at the Akademie fur Publizistic in Hamburg, Germany.

This program is part of the congregation’s 2024-2025 adult education effort to learn about Jewish communities worldwide. Registration is available online at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/BD7pZdvVSSqHuoaM76Zuew#/registration