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'''Anne Skorecki Levy''' (born 1935) is an American educator and activist. A child Holocaust survivor, she is best known for her protest efforts against Louisiana State Representative, [[David Duke]] and his [[Holocaust denial]]. Levy used her own Holocaust experiences to confront Duke in his runs for senate and governor. These confrontations inspired the political strategy used by the Stop Duke Movement and the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism in Duke's run for Governor against [[Edwin Edwards]] in 1991, which was to expose Duke's Nazi and white supremacist leanings.<ref>{{Cite news|url=|title=Fearing duke, voters in Louisiana hand democrat fourth term.|last=Peter|first=Applebome|date=18 November 1991|work=The New York Times|access-date=}}</ref> Biographer Lawrence Powell notes, “Anne Levy shows how one person can become the moral compass for a movement.” <ref>{{Cite web|url=https://njwdev.wp.tulane.edu/social-justice/anne-skorecki-levy/|title=Anne Skorecki Levy|last=Powell|first=Lawerence|date=|website=NOLAJEWISHWOMEN|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=12 June 2019}}</ref> Levy continues her work to this day as an educator for the Southern Institute for Education and Research and the World War II Museum in New Orleans.<ref>{{Cite news|url=|title=From Warsaw to New Orleans, two sisters retell surviving the Holocaust: Our Times.|last=Karst|first=James|date=7 June 2015|work=The Times Picayune|access-date=}}</ref>

== Early life ==
Anne was born in July 1935 to Mark Skorecki and Ruth Tempelhof in Łodz, Poland, the oldest of three children, including Lila, and a brother, Adam.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.teachingtheholocaust.com/2018/03/10/anne-levy-and-lila-millen/|title=Anne Levy and Lila Millen|last=Levy|first=Anne|date=|website=Teaching the Holocaust|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=}}</ref> On September 7, 1939, the Germans occupied Poland and her father fled the city. In March 1940, the family lost their home and were forced into the [[Łódź Ghetto|Łodz Ghetto]] and then the [[Warsaw Ghetto]]. Using papers that identified them as Catholic, they escaped the Warsaw Ghetto and were hidden by a Catholic mother and daughter named Piotrowskas. After a neighbor threatened to expose them they hid in a lumber yard where Mark worked until after the war when the family fled Russian-occupied Poland for American-occupied Germany.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/48884932|title=Troubled memory : Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana|last=Powell|first=Lawrence N.|date=2002|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|year=|isbn=0807853747|location=Chapel Hill, N.C.|pages=53, 59|oclc=48884932}}</ref>

Levy and her family arrived in New Orleans in 1949 where they permanently settled with the help of the [[National Council of Jewish Women]] as part of the Port and Dock Program, an interdenominational resettlement project.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://nolajewishwomen.tulane.edu/social-justice/sarahstone|title=Port and Dock Program|last=Stone|first=Sarah|date=|website=nolajewishwomen|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=}}</ref>

== Confronting David Duke ==
In June 1989, Levy confronted newly elected Louisiana House Representative David Duke at the opening of a Holocaust exhibition in the rotunda of the Louisiana State Capitol. Because the opening was also a press event, her confrontation was caught on camera and replayed on television.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/48884932|title=Troubled memory : Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana|last=Powell, Lawrence N.|date=2002|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|isbn=0807853747|location=Chapel Hill, N.C.|oclc=48884932}}</ref> [[Beth Rickey]], a member of the Republican State Central Committee from New Orleans, credited Anne Levy as her inspiration in holding a press conference showing the Neo-Nazi books that she had purchased from Duke's Metairie legislative office. Ricky said, "I started dragging my feet….and I was a little afraid of Duke as well, but then I thought if Anne Levy has got the guts to walk up to that man and ask him why he said the Holocaust never happened, I certainly could summon the courage to expose his Nazi book-selling operation….I want to back her up.” <ref>{{Cite news|url=http://NewsBank,infoweb.newsbank.com/resources/doc/nb/news/0FADA132701835F8?p=AWNB|title="NEO-NAZI BOOKS, VIDEOS SOLD AT DUKE'S LEGISLATIVE OFFICE."|last=Bridges|first=Tyler|date=8 June 1989|work=The Times Picayune|access-date=11 September 2018}}</ref> Levy used her story to continuously confront Duke in his run for senate against J. Bennet Johnston in 1990 and again when Duke ran for governor against Edwin Edwards in 1991.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/48884932|title=Troubled memory : Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana|last=Powell|first=Lawrence N.|date=|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|year=2002|isbn=0807853747|location=Chapel Hill, N.C.|pages=18|oclc=48884932}}</ref>

==References==
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[[Category:American activists]]
[[Category:1935 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:21st-century American educators]]
[[Category:Polish emigrants to the United States]]
[[Category:Warsaw Ghetto inmates]]