Chaja Verveer to receive library award

The Friendswood Public Library is pleased to announce the 2016 recipient of the Friendswood Library Award for Outstanding Cultural Programming is local resident Chaja Verveer.

Chaja Verveer serves on the Advisory Board of the Holocaust Museum Houston and is president of Child Survivors of the Holocaust, Houston.  She has also served for five years on the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission. 

The Friendswood library carries two books published by Holocaust Museum Houston featuring stories and written works by Chaja Verveer.  Her story as a child survivor of the Holocaust is one of numerous stories featured in the book Ten Years: Rememberance. Education. Hope., and the book The Album: Shadows of Memory features three of Chaja’s written works.  

Chaja’s library programs have focused on her experience as a child survivor of the Holocaust.  Her program Surviving the Holocaust in November of 2007 concluded with a craft service project to create butterflies to be donated to the Holocaust Museum Houston’s Butterfly Project.  The museum collected 1.5 million handmade butterflies to create a breath-taking exhibit in remembrance of the children that perished in the Holocaust.  The exhibit, Taking Flight, opened this April. Her 2014 program, The Improbable Survivor, was attended by an appreciative and over-flowing audience. This program was captured on video and can be borrowed from the Friendswood library. 

The Friendswood library will present this award to Chaja Verveer on Thursday, April 28 at the conclusion of a 7pm program in celebration of National Poetry Month.