Meet Our Team
Leadership
Dr. Deborah Fripp
Executive Director
A professional educator, Yad Vashem trained Holocaust educator, and a storyteller, Deborah is the author of five books including Light from the Darkness: A ritual for Holocaust remembrance.
Now based in Singapore, Deborah holds a PhD from MIT in communication and learning in formal and informal settings.
Violet Neff-Helms
Executive Vice President & Storytelling Director
Known as Tante by the many kindergarten children she taught for fourteen years at Congregation Kol Ami in Flower Mound, Texas, Violet is an experienced storyteller, a Yad Vashem-trained educator, and the co-author of Light from the Darkness: A ritual for Holocaust remembrance.
Violet is based in North-East Texas.
Lynne Feldman
Director of Holocaust Scholarship & General Manager
Lynne is a pioneer in guiding with storytelling, certified as an Educational Holocaust guide by Yad Vashem and a Poland Tour Guide by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism.
Based in Tel Aviv, Lynne is also a dedicated Holocaust scholar and researcher with an MA in Holocaust Studies from the University of Haifa.
Our leadership and all of our team members are also active storytellers.
Team Members
Cantor Karen Webber
Poet, Liturgical Artist, & Support Team Lead
Karen is a performance, teaching and liturgical artist who crafts music/theatre pieces for use in Zoom rooms, senior centers and on the bimah. Ordained as a cantor by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, DFSSM in 1990, Karen has served congregations large and small in all 4 corners of the U.S.
Jenna Price
Storyteller Bureau Manager
Jenna works with the Jewish Council in Gainesville, FL to bring accurate and meaningful Holocaust education into the schools and the community. She is the great-grandchild of victims of the Holocaust who lived in Sokoly, Poland. She grew up hearing stories about the Holocaust from her Grandma Francis. Since then, Jenna has been passionate about Holocaust education.
Cathy Polakoff
Storytelling Director
Cathy is an educator and former behavior therapist specializing in working with children with special needs. She has been a Teach the Shoah storyteller since 2020. In her spare time, Cathy enjoys needle crafts, reading, and spending time with her husband and teenage son.
Tanya Wisoker
Storyteller Coffeehouse Manager
Tanya has been telling stories her whole life, starting with reading to her little sister. She worked with preschoolers, as a museum interpreter, and as a Religious School principal. Tanya was a Day School science teacher and drama coach for 11 years before retiring to pursue her many other interests.
Jessica Silverman
Lead Instructor
Jessica is the granddaughter of survivors and the author of Where There is Life, There is Hope, a biography of her grandmother Minia. Jessica graduated from Tulane University with a degree in Communication. She resides in Baltimore, where she owns a stationery business and is a proud wife and mother of two grown children.
Emily Hand
Historian & Lesaper Project Manager
Emily is a Holocaust historian with a passion for education. She has an MA in Holocaust history from the University of Arkansas. Emily is the Keeper & Teller of Memory for Holocaust survivor Harry Davids. Emily currently resides in East Hampton, NY, where she is an operations coordinator and house parent at the Ross School.
Leora Lazarus
Facilitator
Leora is an author, storyteller, early childhood educator, supplemental school teacher, and best-selling children’s author. Educated in Cape Town, South Africa, she is now based in San Diego, CA. Leora is the granddaughter of survivors and is dedicated to telling her family’s stories.
Gregory Eftimie
Instructor & Coach
Greg a holistic practitioner of massage therapy and folk herbalism in Flower Mound, TX. He is a first generation son of immigrants of Balkan and Eastern European descent. Romanian was his first language.
Storytellers
We have more than 100 active Teach the Shoah-trained storytellers.
Let us tell you about a few of them.
Joel Loeb
Joel is the son of German Holocaust victims. His grandfather Josepf Joseph (a noted lawyer), grandmother Lilly, and mother Liesl, were passengers on the MS St. Louis.
Dorothy Gold
Dorothy is a first generation American of two parents from Poland who both survived a labor camp and concentration camps. She is a retired oncology social worker currently based in Baltimore.
Jamie Neumann
Jamie lives in Baltimore and works in marketing for a Jewish nonprofit. Her grandmother, Johanna Neumann, escaped Nazi persecution by fleeing to Albania, where Muslim families hid her until she could immigrate to the United States.
Dena Hirsh
Dena Litow Hirsh is the daughter of two Shoah survivors who were members of the Jewish underground in the forests of eastern Poland, now Belarus. She is a board member of the Generations After in the greater Washington, DC, area.
We are always looking for new storytellers.
Thank You
Jennifer Rudick Zunikoff
TTS's Original Storytelling Director
Jennifer was instrumental in the formation of Teach the Shoah’s storytelling program. We are incredibly grateful for her creativity, leadership, and the invaluable impact she made on the organization. We thank her for her peerless coaching and her dedication to helping us all be the best storytellers we can be.
A professional Jewish storyteller, educator, facilitator, and coach, Jennifer has been teaching people to tell the stories of Holocaust survivors with empathy and love since 2004. Based in Baltimore, MD, Jennifer is the founder and director of Grow Us a Jewish Story and The Golden Door: Storytelling for Social Justice.
Lea Roshkovski
TTS's Inspiration
Lea was our teacher at the Yad Vashem International School of Holocaust Studies’ “How to Teach the Holocaust in Formal and Informal Jewish Education” seminar in 2015. Yad Vashem’s approach and Lea’s instruction turned our view of Holocaust education on its head.
We thank her for her unparalleled instruction and her inspiration. She lit a fire in us. This organization is our way of spreading the message she taught us.
Lea worked at Yad Vashem for more than 25 years as part of the Teacher Training Division, the College and University Department, and the World Jewry Division where she worked with educators in Jewish frameworks from all over the world.