Dr. Vera Lachman
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Camp Catawba

Dr. Vera Lachman, also, Camp Catawba. Poet. Educator. Classicist.. , Dr. Vera Lachmann , In Germany, she started a school for Jewish and Jewish-Christian children expelled from public schools after the Nazi party took control in 1933. She fled the country soon after the Nazis closed her school in 1939 and sought refuge in the United States at the beginning of World War II. In 1944 Vera bought about 20 acres near Blowing Rock, North Carolina. For decades, the Blue Ridge Mountains served as an enriching backdrop and classroom for the summer campers. Vera was the driving force behind the camp until its final summer in 1970. Lachmann died in 1985., Camp Catawba , Camp Catawba, a summer camp for boys, operated on an old farm near Blowing Rock from 1944 to 1970. At Camp Catawba, the boys benefited from the community and fellowship founder Vera Lachmann created. According to the camp brochure, "Tolerance, cooperation and a sense of beauty are fostered in all camp life.” She integrated the camp and practiced the inclusion she did not find in her home country. Lachmann taught the classics, reciting The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer in alternating summers and directing plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes and Shakespeare., Ev'ry valley shall be exalted..." , Messiah, by George Frederic Handel , The campers went on hikes to Thunder Hill along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and rode in truck to the base of Grandfather Mountain where they hiked to several of its peaks.They played sports and swam in a spring-fed pond. Most of the campers came from New York and Washington and many had fled Nazi Germany. A few were so surprised to meet boys from South Carolina or Georgia that they asked which country they had come from. , "If music be the food of love, play on...." , Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare , The camp's music program was run by Lachmann's companion and partner, composer Tui St. George Tucker. The activities included a choir that sang everything from Gregorian chant to spirituals, and an orchestra that performed the works of Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert.