The Shadows of Shoah Exhibition was launched in 2013 by New Zealand Prime Minister John Key. Since then it has toured museums, galleries and public spaces the length of New Zealand.

27 January is United Nations International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Over this week Shalom.Kiwi will post a survivor story each day to raise awareness of this important event – an event that becomes increasingly important as survivors pass and as anti-Semitism re-emerges. We invite readers to share these stories with their networks via social media.

Today is the third in our series and the story is that of Roald Hoffman.

Roald Hoffmann was born in Poland in 1937. During the war he was hidden in the attic and a storeroom of the local schoolhouse, along with his mother, two uncles and an aunt from the age five to seven. While in hiding his mother kept Hoffmann entertained by teaching him to read and having him memorize geography from textbooks stored in the attic, then quizzing him. He went on to become a theoretical chemist and won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He has also published plays and poetry and is the Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters, Emeritus, at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York.