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.

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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.

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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.

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Zachor – Remember. This word appears almost 200 times in the Torah.

Over and over again, we are commanded to remember. We are commanded to remember that which makes us holy (the Sabbath). We are commanded to remember that which makes us who we are (the Torah). And we are commanded to remember our history.

We remember. We remember our forefathers and our foremothers. We remember our heroes. We remember our temples and our kingdoms.

At this time of year, we remember Egypt. This 3,000-year-old history is one of the most important stories we tell – a story that shapes us as a people. Every year at Seder, we remind ourselves that we must tell our people’s stories “l’Dor v’Dor,” from generation to generation.

At this time of year, we also remember another event that has shaped us as a people – a much more recent history. A week after Passover ends, we will mark Yom Hashoah, the commemoration of the horrors of the Holocaust.

We remember.

The Holocaust demands that we remember in a different way, however – a global way. The Holocaust did not only re-shape the Jewish people; it re-shaped the world. The Holocaust is one of the most significant events in human history, if only for how it changed how we see ourselves and our behavior.

This was not the first time that one group of people attempted to eradicate another, but it was the first time we recognized genocide for what it was. It was, perhaps, the first time humanity truly reflected on our own behavior as a species and blanched at the unimaginable cruelty we found there.

We may never truly understand how such an atrocity was possible, but we all have a responsibility to remember that it was possible.

We at Teach the Shoah have taken the task of helping the world remember as the central part of our mission.

Over the last 18 months, we have brought college students together with Holocaust survivors to keep these survivors’ memories alive. Each student learns a single survivor’s story. They stand in front of the survivors, and the world, and promise to keep this memory. They promise to share the story for as long as they can.

Most of these students are not Jewish. As they bring these survivors’ stories to communities across the country, they show the world that the Holocaust is a story we all must tell and we all must hear.

Our third cohort of students is preparing to start their journey to become keepers of survivor memories. As we approach both Passover and Yom Hashoah, we feel that we are beginning to fulfill our own promise – to remember l’Dor v’Dor, from generation to generation.

The photo collage shows our Lesaper tellers and survivors – from left to right and top to bottom: Emily Hand & Harry Davids; Henry Slucki & Sarah Dilatush; Sonia Chiappe & Ellie Rubin; Cooper Horton, Eva Brettler, & Libby Holden; Lya Frank & Riley Farco; Matthew Taleghani & Eva Nathanson; Torrie Herrington & Gabriella Karin; Avery Epperson & Henry Slucki; Taylor O’Neil & Gabriella Karin; Rowan Fripp with Monika White & Gitta Morris; Maddi Ruiz & Henry Weil; Eva Nathanson & Brenna Metts.

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The post 2025 Annual Report appeared first on Teach the Shoah.

There are times when the work is visible—when a teller stands before an audience and a story is carried aloud.

And there are times when the work happens more quietly.

February held both.

We gathered for an Echoes of the Past program, Saving Our Souls, examining acts of uprising through the perspective of rescuers, where resistance took the form of sheltering, hiding, and choosing to act. Through an Exploring Their Stories workshop, we began a new introduction to Holocaust storytelling class, inviting a new group into the careful work of listening that precedes telling.

At the same time, we are preparing a third Los Angeles cohort of Lesaper: From Survivor Memory to Living Teller. A new group of students will soon enter into this work—joining a growing community committed to telling these stories.

We are also beginning to shape an upcoming fundraiser—an in-person event in Los Angeles that we intend to livestream so that our broader community can join us in supporting this work. We’ll share more details soon.

Alongside this, we continue the longer work: building partnerships, refining what we teach, and asking how this work can endure.

Not every month is defined by the stage. But each month is part of what makes those moments possible.

In the coming weeks, we will share more about this work in our annual report.

With gratitude for being part of this work,
Deborah

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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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