There was no shortage of commitment to Holocaust education at this summer’s NewCAJE conference. At least seven sessions focused on the Shoah, including two from Teach the Shoah (TTS). Participants could even earn a Holocaust Certificate.

What struck me, though, was how eager these educators were for tools that could help their students connect with the Holocaust on a deeper, more personal level – the very challenge I had come to address in my session on TTS’s educational approach.

My session participants were blown away by our storytelling technique. They were experienced educators who knew how to assign readings, display maps, and encourage students to interview survivors in their communities. They knew how to teach the history. What they needed was a way to make it personal.

I told a 3-minute story about the bravery of ballerina Francezka Mann as she arrived in Auschwitz. I showed them the primary sources I used to develop the story. We discussed which aspects of her experiences would or would not be appropriate for different audiences.

I shared a few brief pieces of written testimony from survivor June Salzer Prager. I gave them the opportunity to describe the images they formed from each. Then I told Juniya’s entire story, and we discussed the choices I made in the telling.

Several people told me later that they had found my workshop to be very impactful and useful to them as teachers. They thanked me for introducing them to this new tool for teaching about the Shoah.

In the evening, there was music, comedy, and moving performances. Jennifer Zunikoff’s portrayal of Emma Lazarus brought to life her passion for refugees – for people pushed from their homelands because they were considered too “other” – and her vision of an America that would welcome them. Then Dvora Caspi’s husband, Abba, led his choir onto the stage to sing “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor,” Irving Berlin’s setting of Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus.”

We ended the evening with Rachel Haymer (Kol Isha) singing, and her lyrics electrified me with purpose. We in the audience sang along to her words: “It’s on us”. ­

And there it is. It is indeed on us. Both Jewish and non-Jewish educators want to teach this aspect of Jewish history, but they need new tools and effective resources to do it. We at TTS have the tools and resources and, most importantly, the people to help them do it.

It’s on us.

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Sometimes an experience gives you a lot more than you expect. That was the case when I recently attended NewCAJE, an annual conference for Jewish educators. I was not there as a Teach the Shoah (TTS) teller but rather attended because of my job as a temple educator. I expected the conference would provide inspiration and ideas to enhance my teaching, and it did. However, the most valuable takeaway was unrelated to this. Instead, it was the connections I made with other TTS storytellers.

During the conference I met several TTS members whom I had only met over Zoom, as well as one whom I hadn’t met but whose name I recognized. I instantly felt a bond to each of them. We talked, laughed, gave positive support before sessions we were presenting, and learned more about each other’s lives. In other words, we formed a community. What surprised me was how quickly and easily this happened, which reflects on the wonderful atmosphere created by TTS leadership and everyone involved.

Since taking the Moving from Testimony to Story class a year ago, I have felt the strength and support of the TTS community. Through the willingness of others in my class to listen to me experimenting with scenes and revising them until they worked, the appreciations given after a presentation, the workshops during which storytellers can receive help from each other, and so much more, the sense of being part of a community is always there.

Even outside the actual storytelling, members of the TTS community clearly care about each other. Recently, someone mentioned that she had experienced an antisemitic incident. TTS members immediately responded with their support in terms of her response and their pride in her for responding as she did. Birthday wishes sent to others in the group are more than just “happy birthday” because they often include an appreciation of the person’s contribution to TTS.

Telling Holocaust stories can be hard. Each time I tell my dad’s story, I wonder how it will be received by the listeners and whether it will make a difference. The emotions I feel when telling the story stay with me for quite some time. Having the TTS community’s support is invaluable in so many ways and is greatly appreciated.

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I have heard many positive things said by participants after a storytelling presentation. Some of the most memorable comments, however, have come from high school students. At a recent program at a public high school near my home in the Dallas area, we not only shared stories of the Holocaust and talked about the history, but we also talked about the assorted cultures of Jews in various places across Europe and how those cultures were impacted by the Holocaust. Many resulting comments and questions from the students were poignant and insightful, but one in particular stood out.

“I always knew [the Holocaust] was bad, but it wasn’t until I heard you tell this girl’s story in her own voice that I understood how bad it really was, how horrible it must have been for the people that lived through it.”  The young lady who said this went on to talk about how eye-opening it was to hear about a girl roughly her own age (16 or 17 years old) coping with such traumatic issues. She compared this to her own life and was genuinely moved by her counterpart’s struggles. This young woman then commented on the similarities in day-to-day life between herself and the girl whose story she had just heard. It was clear she saw more things they had in common than differences between them.

The best part about this girl’s reaction to my story was what she did with it. A few weeks later, I came back to the school as a parent evaluator. This is a role specific to this school where parents of students at the school are invited to view and evaluate projects completed by students in various classes. This girl created an amazing art piece depicting the teenager in my story, showing her thinking about what she would do when the war ended, and she could go back to living her life. The student gave a short presentation about the piece, and how she was inspired by both my story and the story of another girl in similar circumstances. The entire time she spoke, I just stared at her artwork and listened to her, quietly kvelling.

I later learned that her art was entered in a city-wide contest focused on art depicting the Holocaust. The contest was sponsored by the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum and had entries from high schools all over the DFW Metroplex. While this student’s art didn’t win, it was one of very few chosen as a finalist. This is the sort of thing that inspires me. This is why I tell these stories.

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This week I told my father’s story to several classes of tenth graders at a local high school. My father, his parents, and his younger sister left Germany in 1933 to move to Czechoslovakia only to be living under Nazi rule once again in 1939. Through luck, courage, and ingenuity, they then managed to reach Istanbul, Turkey where they lived the remainder of the war.

After my presentation, there was time for slides, questions, and discussion. One slide I showed had two photos – my father (about age 2) holding his father’s hand next to one of my father (age 90) holding his first great-grandchild’s hand. I asked what students thought had helped my father’s family survive the Holocaust, so he was able to live to have great-grandchildren. The first two answers I received were optimism and resiliency. Both answers not only told me that these students had connected with the story but also spoke to what I think we all need during difficult times – optimism (or at least hope that conditions will improve) and resiliency to continue on.

At one point a student asked, “Do you have any questions you wish you could ask your father?” This question touched my heart immediately. I never stop wishing I could ask my father more about his life during the Holocaust. I know that he would not be able to answer some of the questions because his parents never spoke to him about many details (such as how they obtained false documents to travel to Turkey). I know there are questions he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer because it was still too painful for him even towards the end of his life. Despite this, I never stop wishing that I had one more chance to learn more about his experiences. Maybe this reflects my mixed emotions when telling his story — missing him but also feeling he is near me and happy I am keeping his story alive.

Towards the very end of the session, a student commented that hearing me tell my dad’s story made it much more real than just reading about it in a book. What a great appreciation of the wonderful work done by Teach the Shoah and one that reinforces my commitment to keep my father’s story alive.

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When I initially decided to pursue a fellowship through Teach the Shoah, I did so with the intention of learning more about public history. I felt understanding history’s utility outside of academia would benefit me. I did not expect to learn anything new about myself or for the content to connect emotionally with me.

But history was brought to life in a deeply intimate and powerful way, changing how I view my own life.

Meeting Joseph Samuels for the first time, an Iraqi Jew and 95-year-old Holocaust survivor, intimidated me. We were separated by seven decades and immensely different upbringings. However, our interviews quickly dispelled any notion that we truly were very different from one another.

Joe recounted many elements of his childhood that resonated with me and recalled my own memories, from his close yet at times combative relationships with his older brothers to the fear that a monster lived in his toilet. Even a century ago, sibling quarrels and imaginary monsters were among the troubles a young boy confronted while growing up.

The sense of similarity between our upbringings dissipated when Joe detailed his experience during the Farhud to me. Despite being so far removed from Germany, the consequences of Nazism and antisemitism reached Iraq and precipitated a violent massacre in Baghdad, the city where Joe grew up, in 1941. He viscerally detailed his experiences during this time and vividly highlighted a chapter of the Holocaust I was previously unfamiliar with. His story not only informed me about an aspect of history which had slipped through the cracks but also gave me a devastating understanding of what enduring such an experience is like.

However, our discussions also revealed the other parts of Joe’s life that might otherwise have been overshadowed by his experiences during the Farhud. After escaping from Iraq and eventually relocating to America, Joe began a new life. He established a successful real estate career, started a family, travelled the world, and restored his sense of community.

He could have just as easily succumbed to despair and allowed the atrocities he witnessed to determine his life. Instead, he took advantage of his tremendous good fortune and made the most of the opportunities that presented themselves to him.

And this remains true for the other survivors I met – despite the horrors they experienced, they lived incredibly rich and beautiful lives after the Holocaust. So often we forget that the stories of many who survived the Holocaust did not end with liberation: while many never moved on, perpetually grappling with their trauma or choosing to end their lives, many thrived after the horrific events they experienced and lived long, fruitful, and happy lives. However, these portions of survivors’ stories are often diminished or entirely ignored.

The stories of the survivors I met inspired and encouraged me, not only because of their incredible resilience and spirit, but also because they demonstrate the human capacity for rebuilding and restoring, that our worst experiences do not have to define who we are or what we can accomplish.

Even those who experienced the evils of the Holocaust – from the Farhud that Joe’s family narrowly survived to the concentration camps and the mass slaughter that occurred in Europe – were often able to prevail and begin again, unwilling to let the evil of antisemitism define them or limit their story.

Being in my final year of undergraduate study, still navigating the fallout of a medical trauma I had experienced several years prior and anxious about what awaited me after college, the stories of Joseph Samuels, Henry Slucki, and Eva Nathanson felt particularly pertinent to my own situation. They reminded me not only of the consequences of hatred and dehumanization, but also of our capacity to dictate our own lives and make the most of the future, even when our past feels inescapable and hope feels out of reach. We do not choose the circumstances we face or the challenges that confront us, but we do have the ability to decide how we respond.

The post Lesaper: Lessons in Rebuilding, Hope, and Resilience appeared first on Teach the Shoah.

In December of 2025, after many months of resisting, my mother quietly passed away as I held her. Gone after 98 resilient and powerful years.

I retired in August 2020, when she was 93, as she needed more care and support. I saw she was fading, and I knew that her Kindertransport story would fade with her. I knew that this story needed to be told, and that I needed to be the one to do it!

I took a course provided by the Kindertransport Association and gave my first PowerPoint presentation in December 2023. Then, in early 2024, I joined Teach the Shoah and discovered the power of storytelling.

I remember the day when, instead of a chronological presentation, I started the third-person story on the morning after Kristallnacht when my 11-year-old mother headed to the town square in Breslau, Germany. The story was now three dimensional and filled with emotion!

I presented the story to my mother and videoed her reaction to hearing it, which was very powerful and validating. I include that video at the end of my slide presentation – after I’ve told her story. It is a way for her to be there, even though she isn’t telling the story.

In 2025, I had a full season of school presentations. I shared with my mother that I had taken her story on the road. She was so proud of me for doing so, even though she never would have done it herself. Her pride fueled me even more!

And then I lost her. As the 2026 school speaking season came around, I was nervous. Could I tell her story without crying? It didn’t feel the same. I was still missing her.

My first telling was in early April to a small history class in a charter school. I told the teacher about the circumstances, so he would be prepared in case I was overcome with emotions. During the telling, I was aware of feeling sad, but it didn’t bubble up, and I was able to tell her story.

The very first question of the Q&A was, “Is your mother still alive?”

I felt the emotions come up to the surface and overflow; my eyes started tearing. With some difficulty, I held it together and told them that she had recently died.

I said that in the Jewish faith, we have an expression: May their memory be for a blessing. By this, we mean that any time the departed person is thought of or spoken about, they are fully present and we are blessed to be once again in their presence.

Before and After: The purpose and drive to do this is still the same. Now my heart is heavier, but my mother is with me, fully present when I tell her story. Like her, I am brave and will continue telling. I have to.

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There is something unexpected about the community that forms in a bomb shelter, about the stories that are told, the stories that are requested, and the conversations that ensue.

Saturday morning

Sirens: war has started. We sit in the shelter. Everyone looks very tense and stressed. We can all hear the explosions from above.

By evening, people’s faces begin to look more familiar, and conversations start.

The person across from me asks a random question that leads to a conversation about Raul Wallenberg and the Righteous Among the Nations. Others listen in. I tell them about Carl Lutz and the Glass House. I tell them the story of Testimony House in Nir Galim: how some of the Glass House survivors and other young Hungarian Jews built the museum so that the memory would be preserved.

One of the women asks if I have heard of Chiune Sugihara. She tells us that her father was rescued by Sugihara! I excitedly tell her about Teach the Shoah, and how we would love for her to learn how to tell her father’s story and to share it with others.

The Following Week

Sirens go off without a pre-warning. (A 3-min warning issued by the homefront that sirens will go off soon.) Without the pre-warning, we have 90 seconds to get to shelter.

As I rush out of my apartment building, a lovely woman who lives in the private house across the street opens her front door and invites me into her shelter. I run to join her.

I have always admired this house. There is a sculpture in the front garden of a stack of books: the top part has open books which remind me of butterflies.

In the shelter, I ask her about the sculpture. She tells me that it was created especially for the house symbolizing the different literary people who lived there.

I knew the house was built by an Israeli author and publisher named of Rabinski. Sitting in the shelter, I learn that right after the war, the house was rented by Yehiel Di Nur, aka Ka-Tsetnik.

Ka-Tsetnik coined the phrase “Auschwitz, the other planet.” I grew up reading his work. And he lived here. He wrote here right in this spot! One of the books I grew up reading might have been written right here!

I think this may have been the first time in a shelter that I didn’t know how long it was before we got the all-clear and I could go home.

Passover in the Shelter

By Passover, there is a regular group in the local shelter. We know each other: a small, strange community that exists underground.

Someone asks me to tell a story of a Jewish hero from the Holocaust. There are so many choices. I tell them about Rozka Korczak, one of the resistance leaders from Vilna. A teenage girl says she never heard of such a thing. She starts googling Rozka and her partner, Vitka Kempner.

Someone asks me to tell them about Albania. Why are they so special in the Shoah? I tell them about the first Albanian to be recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, Refik Veseli. This leads to a conversation about where we find light in humanity.

We come out of the shelter into the fresh air. A few clouds are scattered in the sky, but a ray of sun shines through.

Another cease fire is declared. Another light through the darkness.

The post Thoughts of a Teller: Bomb Shelter version appeared first on Teach the Shoah.

Every story about the Holocaust has a survivor at its heart. That sounds ridiculous on the surface, but it’s true. And it’s why I can tell (and hear) these stories repeatedly despite the emotional reaction each one brings. Allow me to explain.

Many of the stories we tell are stories of survival. Despite the horror of the story itself, knowing the person whose story I am telling lived to tell their own story gives me a sense of pride in Jewish courage and resilience in the face of unimaginable obstacles. It’s as if we stand as a people, united, to say, “We’re stronger than you think, and we will not let you win!”

Some stories, though, end in tragedy – millions of them, in fact. But let’s think for a moment about how we come to learn these stories. After all, the perpetrators of these murders, for all their meticulous bookkeeping, did not write down the stories of their victims’ lives, their hopes and dreams, or their acts of courage, defiance, love, and basic humanity. That knowledge had to come from somewhere else.

Sometimes it comes from a diary or journal found by a relative, friend, or bystander. Sometimes it comes from a relative who survived, shared as part of a larger story. Sometimes the story comes from a friend, a would-be rescuer, or even a stranger. In some cases, the survivor lived because someone else died to save them. Stories come from Jews and non-Jews, from soldiers, diplomats, and witnesses.

Here’s the thing, though – every single one of these people was also a survivor. Everyone who witnessed these stories survived something – if not the Holocaust, then the war. Jews and other victims survived camps, ghettos, and killing pits. Soldiers survived battles; townspeople survived bombings. Some of the witnesses were rescuers or would-be rescuers, putting their own lives and the lives of their families at risk, and surviving to tell the story.

So, no, not everyone who went through the Holocaust survived it. But yes, every Holocaust story we can tell has, at its core, a survivor. Stories that do not include a survivor are lost to us.

When I tell a Holocaust story, or listen to one, it is the courage and resilience of the survivor at its core that gives me the strength to keep telling these stories. That, and the knowledge that, despite efforts to the contrary, this history was not, nor will it ever be, lost to time.

The post The Heart of the Story appeared first on Teach the Shoah.

When I was very young, I learned that if I sat quietly, I could listen undisturbed to my mother and aunts telling stories from their childhoods. As I heard names I recognized and places I had seen, I sat fascinated at the revelations.

People I knew as sweet old ladies had once been rude and wild teenagers. I learned of families formed and broken, children lost to disease, cousins who went to war and never came home. I’ve never been addicted to soap operas, but these stories held me in their spell. Each unraveled tale made the people spoken of come to life for me – their work, their talents, their sense of humor, the kindnesses shown, the secrets taken to their graves.

With this background, I was excited to be part of the storytelling classes when my Teach the Shoah co-founder Deborah Fripp introduced us to storyteller Jennifer Rudick Zunikoff. Through the tools Jennifer laid out for us, we were taught to listen differently to a story – that it was in the listening that the telling grew.

I am more convinced today than when I began of the need for and importance of this method of teaching. Storytelling is powerful because it triggers the release of oxytocin and dopamine, hormones known to enhance our sense of empathy for others and to boost motivation. This is one of our goals as an organization – to motivate people to be not just passive hearers but positive doers.

As Holocaust educators, the stories we share are not easy ones to tell. Often painful to hear, they open a page of history that many tried to bury long ago. Simply speaking the word Holocaust can cause a strong emotional response.

We do not do this simply to unnerve or upset people. We share these stories so we can be the voice of those now silenced by time – so their lives will not be forgotten. We verbally open the door on their world, not just to reveal their suffering but to show their living. As my family stories helped me see relatives as ‘real’ people, so our storytelling advances the knowledge that once there was a people who faced the world they lived in with courage, uncertainty, and perseverance.

Being a Holocaust storyteller is an honor and a privilege.

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Growing up in Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), I was always mesmerized by a black and white portrait in my maternal grandparents’ bedroom. It showed a gorgeous young woman with her head tilted slightly toward her shoulder, her subtle smile brightening her face. This was my grandmother’s beloved older sister Magdalena. Everyone called her “Dushika” (“little soul”). Even as a little girl, I remember my grandmother crying with her hands covering her face, mourning her beloved sister whom she lost so tragically.

What I knew as a child was limited. Magda was my grandmother’s favorite sister who died in Auschwitz. My beautiful mama was named after her. Only later did I learn the full story. Magdalena was one of 999 young single women on the very first transport to Auschwitz from the Slovak State in March 1942. They were ages 16 to 36 — exactly the age of my own daughters now.

As a Holocaust educator and storyteller in Los Angeles, my family story has often inspired my work. Three years ago, while preparing an exhibit at Holocaust Museum LA, I researched the other women on that first transport — their connections, dreams, and bonds of sisterhood. My sources included original artifacts, testimonies, and interviews I conducted or witnessed.

During this research, I discovered Teach the Shoah. I took their storytelling classes and was hooked. My mentor, Jennifer, offered me a chance to be a featured storyteller in January 2024. Working on and sharing Dushika’s story was transformative. It allowed me to connect more deeply to my family story and learn how to share it meaningfully with others.

The moment I finished, relief and pride flooded my body. “I brought her story alive! I remember her in a way she would feel seen!” Hearing the audience’s appreciation, I understood the power a well-told story can have. We are all storytellers, but our voices need to be discovered and sharpened.

Deep storytelling can shape us into better listeners and make us empathize on levels that statistics never can. It creates community, serves as a bridge without judgment, and conveys messages people might otherwise resist hearing.

When an opportunity arose to join LeSaper: From Survivor Memory to Living Teller, I became a bridge-maker and survivor coordinator. Witnessing students become storytellers and ambassadors of survivors’ stories was tremendously powerful. Their empathy and commitment left a lasting impression on all of us, including the survivors themselves. The survivors know that their stories will be preserved and alive for the next generation.

Today I have not only a photograph of Magda Altmann but also pride in our family’s story of memory and resilience. I honor our memory with joy and community-building on two continents, bridged by family ties, love, and the strong Jewish values my grandmother would be unshakably proud of.

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