The Claims Conference, in partnership with the Austrian government, is proud to unveil “Benno’s Light,” an immersive mixed-reality experience that allows users to explore Holocaust survivor Benno Kern’s family history through VR headsets, computers or handheld devices. The project represents the latest achievement from the Claims Conference in our quest to expand access to Holocaust education by engaging younger generations through innovative technology. Today’s launch of “Benno’s Light” – a VR project integrating real-life footage, photographs and audio from the period spanning the Anschluss to Auschwitz into the hand-drawn world of Mr. Kern’s story of survival and loss – at the University of Vienna carries profound historical significance. Following the destruction of Vienna’s medieval synagogue and the murder and expulsion of Jews in 1421, stones from the synagogue were incorporated into some of the earliest buildings that would become part of the University of Vienna. More than 500 years later, the university serves as a place to confront that history, transforming a site once linked to the erasure of Jewish life into a space dedicated to remembrance, education and the preservation of Holocaust survivor testimony for future generations. The immersive technology company makemepulse created the artwork for “Benno’s Light,” which will be exhibited in museums and film festivals alongside educational materials currently under development. The experience can be accessed here: bennos-light.org #RememberThis #HolocaustEducation #NeverForget

Your family’s story deserves to be remembered. The Claims Conference’s new Survivor Legacy Initiative invites children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of Holocaust survivors to help carry their families’ stories forward. Through storytelling, dialogue, and community engagement, participants will have the opportunity to share their family histories with educational and religious institutions. No prior speaking experience is required. Participants will receive training and support, as well as the opportunity to record their family stories so that the experiences of their loved ones can be documented and honored for generations to come. If you are a descendant of a Holocaust survivor or victim, sign up by completing a simple Speaker Application Form and help make sure your family’s story is told. Visit nextgencenter.claimscon.org to learn more and apply. #SurvivorLegacy #HolocaustEducation #HolocaustRemembrance #ClaimsConference

Gianna Pontecorboli survived the Holocaust and went on to build a remarkable life as a journalist and writer. During the war, Gianna and her family survived with the help of Italians who provided them with false identification documents and helped them hide from the Nazis. For Gianna and her sisters, even something as simple as their family name became part of their survival. They had to learn that they were no longer the Pontecorboli family, but the Prosperi family. After the war, Gianna earned a degree in economics from the University of Genoa and began a successful career in journalism. She later moved to the United States, where she worked as a correspondent and radio journalist, traveling extensively throughout the Americas and telling stories across borders and cultures. Gianna also became an author. Her book, *Americordo: The Italian Jewish Exiles in America*, explores the experiences of Italian Jewish exiles who found refuge in the United States. The success of the book is a source of great pride for Gianna and reflects her lifelong commitment to preserving stories and sharing them with others. Her journey is a powerful reminder of the resilience of Holocaust survivors. They did not simply survive. They went on to build careers, write, create, and make meaningful contributions to the world. Hear Gianna’s story and the stories of other Holocaust survivors firsthand. Invite a Survivor Speakers Bureau speaker to your school, organization, or community. Learn more and request a speaker: claimscon.org/speakers/ #VanishingWitnesses #SurvivorSpeakersBureau #HolocaustEducation

In this episode of IN CONVERSATION, a Claims Conference Saul Kagan Fellowship podcast, we are joined by Dr. Kierra Crago Schneider, Dr. Maria Ferenc and Dr. Borbala (Bori) Klacsmann to discuss the plight of elderly Jews in the Holocaust – a group among the most vulnerable that has had little scholarly and literary work focused on their experiences. podbean.com/eas/pb-n2hnn-1b8…

Born Marcus Arpels Lezer in 1936, he was just a young child when the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands tore his family apart. His father went into hiding, while his mother was arrested in 1942 and deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered. His father desperately searched for a place to hide his young son. He eventually found Ype and Boukje Wetterauw, a Christian couple in Friesland who took Marcus into their home. Although people in the village knew that Marcus was Jewish, he was never betrayed. Marcus lived with the Wetterauw family until 1948, using different names to conceal his identity. His father survived the war and returned, but his mother never did. The Wetterauws had become his family, and the transition back to life with his father was difficult. Marcus ran away from home several times, returning twice to the family who had sheltered him. In 1961, Marcus married Sofia Noek, who had also survived the Holocaust in hiding as a child. Today, he serves as President of the European Association of Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust, continuing to honor the experiences of survivors and preserve their stories. Bring a Survivor Speakers Bureau speaker to your school, organization, or community and hear directly from those who witnessed history firsthand. Learn more and request a speaker: claimscon.org/speakers/ #VanishingWitnesses #SurvivorSpeakersBureau #HolocaustEducation

On October 7, 2023, Holocaust survivor Elyahu Megira witnessed Hamas terrorists shooting people in the streets of Sderot. He tried to warn his son, Avi, of the attack, not knowing that he had already been killed. Now, Elyahu and his wife cry every night, mourning their Avi. The Claims Conference is with Holocaust survivors as they grieve the friends, family members and loved ones who were murdered on October 7. We pray for quieter and more peaceful days in the year ahead for the Jewish people, for Israel, and all humanity. #RememberThis #October7 #HolocaustSurvivor

“A European noblewoman, who narrowly escaped the Nazi monster, made Aliyah to Israel, chose to settle in Beersheba, and from there began to change the world. She was a kindergarten teacher, an educator, and a family therapist who touched the most open wounds of the most complex families in the toughest neighborhoods. She touched and healed, embraced and helped’ - Chen Avigdori honoring his mother-in-law, Holocaust survivor Ruth Haran Herzman z"l. Born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1936, Holocaust survivor Ruth Haran Herzman spent her childhood fleeing persecution. After her father was expelled from Romania, the family eventually reunited in Czernowitz. As German forces advanced, they fled with the hospital her father managed and reached Central Asia. Her father died of typhus after the war. Ruth, her mother and her younger brother later boarded a crowded refugee ship and made Aliyah to Israel. She eventually made her home in Kibbutz Be’eri, near the Gaza border. On October 7, 2023, her son, Avshalom Shoham, was killed, and her daughter, daughter-in-law and grandchildren were taken hostage. Her family members were released in November 2023 and February 2025. That the horrors they experienced on October 7 are now interwoven with their Holocaust persecution testimonies is painful. However, even as this trauma endures within them – as it does across Israel and Jewish communities around the world – we learn lessons in resilience from these Holocaust survivors. #RememberThis #October7 #HolocaustSurvivors

“I completely lost my memory. Before this, I used to remember; I had dates in my head that served as anchors.” Holocaust survivor Francine Burshtein was born in Paris in 1938. When the Nazis invaded France, her family fled the city and she survived the war in hiding on a farm and concealing her Jewishness. Having made Aliyah and living in Kibbutz Nirim, near the Gaza border, she hid in her home’s safe room on October 7, 2023, while Hamas terrorists attacked and killed her neighbors and took others hostage. The Claims Conference is dedicated to sharing Holocaust survivors’ testimonies of the hatred they suffered in their youth and preserving their traumatic experiences of October 7. Sadly, their trauma endures. Thankfully, we can learn lessons of resilience and courage from these survivors and pass them along to future generations. Our thoughts are with them and with everyone impacted by October 7th. We are with them as they mourn and remember. #RememberThis #October7 #HolocaustSurvivors @claimsconil @JewishClaimsCon

Did the Salvation Army help Jews in Germany who were being persecuted during the Holocaust? Listen as author Dr. Rebecca Carter-Chand joins IN CONVERSATION, a Claims Conference Saul Kagan Fellowship podcast🎙️. #HolocaustEducation bit.ly/4xQlzH0

Whenever Holocaust survivors gather with us on Sukkot, the Claims Conference is privileged to welcome our own living ushpizin. They are heroes not only because they survived, but because they rebuilt homes and families, created careers and communities, and found the courage to believe. Earlier this week, we joined 50 Holocaust survivors at the annual Sukkot celebration organized by Westchester Jewish Community Services (WJCS). Throughout the year, WJCS, led by Seth Diamond, Chief Executive Officer of WJCS, and Allison Danzig, Coordinator of Holocaust Survivor Services, provides Holocaust survivors with home care, social work, food assistance and other essential services supported by the Claims Conference. The connection between the survivors and the professionals, social workers and aides who care for and accompany them throughout the year could be felt across the room. They were not simply service providers and recipients; they knew one another, cared about one another and shared a genuine sense of community. The Claims Conference supports gatherings like this throughout the year and around the world. For survivors who may be alone, or for whom the holidays awaken memories of loss, these gatherings provide companionship, dignity and joy. As the lulav and etrog were passed around at the WJCS celebration, one survivor refused to shake the lulav downward. She explained, with characteristic defiance #HolocaustSurvivors #Sukkot

“The Holocaust doesn't identify me. What identifies me is what I do.” — Sami Steigmann Sami Steigmann’s life story spans countries, borders, and generations. Born in 1939 in Czernovitz, Bukovina, Sami was just a young child when he and his parents were imprisoned in a labor camp in Mogilev-Podolsky, in Transnistria, from 1941 to 1944. After the war, Sami grew up in Transylvania before his family emigrated to Israel in 1961. He served in the Israeli Air Force and later, at 28, came alone to the United States without knowing the language or having money. After years of building a life across two countries, he eventually made New York City his home. Today, Sami is an incredible speaker whose goal in life is to share the truth and educate younger generations. Through his testimony, he reminds us that while the Holocaust is part of his history, it does not define who he is or what he chooses to do with his life. We are grateful to the Center for Jewish History for helping make this interview possible and for supporting the preservation of Sami’s testimony. Bring a Survivor Speakers Bureau speaker to your school, organization, or community and hear directly from those who witnessed history firsthand. Learn more and request a speaker: claimscon.org/speakers/ #VanishingWitnesses #SurvivorSpeakersBureau #HolocaustEducation

The Light in the Darkness: Director’s Cut is a free narrative game following a Polish-Jewish family living in Nazi-occupied France. Rather than placing the player on a battlefield or offering a fantasy of changing history, the game stays with ordinary people as antisemitism, state policy, persecution, and deportation dismantle their lives. Recognizing the importance of innovation in expanding the reach and impact of #HolocaustEducation, the Claims Conference provides grants to new media projects like The Light in the Darkness to reach younger generations in formats that will engage and inspire them.

Did the Salvation Army help Jews in Germany who were being persecuted during the Holocaust? The Claims Conference welcomes former Saul Kagan Fellow Dr. Rebecca Carter-Chand, Director of the Programs on Religion and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for the inaugural episode of IN CONVERSATION, a Claims Conference Saul Kagan Fellowship podcast. The conversation highlights Rebecca’s most recent book, “Christian Internationalism and German Belonging: The Salvation Army from Imperial Germany to Nazism,” which examines how the organization, founded in 1865, compromised its professed values while operating in 20th-century Germany. The book won the George L. Mosse First Book Prize. Rebecca is also co-editor, with Kevin Spicer, of “Religion, Ethnonationalism, and Antisemitism in the Era of the Two World Wars.” Most recently, she contributed a chapter on Christianity to the forthcoming “Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Memory.” Dr. Joanna Sliwa, a historian at the Claims Conference, where she also administers the Saul Kagan Fellowship in Advanced Shoah Studies and the University Partnership in Holocaust Studies, moderates the conversation. Joanna is the author of the award-winning book “Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust”; co-author, with Elizabeth B. White, of “The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles during the Holocaust”; and co-editor, with Christine Schmidt and Elizabeth Anthony, of “Older Jews and the Holocaust.” The Claims Conference Saul Kagan Fellowship in Advanced Shoah Studies supports international Ph.D. candidates and postdoctoral scholars focusing on the Holocaust. The Kagan Fellowship funds research and writing, allowing scholars to travel to Holocaust-related archives, many of which have not been closely examined. #inConversation #RememberThis #HolocaustEducation bit.ly/4xQlzH0

Leon Franko met and married Rebecca Pissirilo while fleeing the Nazis. Rebecca gave birth to their daughter, Esther, the day Leon was deported to his death in Auschwitz. Esther was saved by a nurse and survived the Holocaust. Rebecca did not - she was executed by the Nazis after they found her in hiding. In April 1941, Macedonia was annexed to Bulgaria, and Macedonia’s Jews were subjected to discriminatory Bulgarian legislation. In September 1942, the Jews were forced to identify their homes and places of business, and all Jews aged ten and over were made to wear a Star of David on their left breast. In February 1943, Bulgaria signed an agreement with Germany to deport 20,000 Jews from its territories, including all the Jews of Macedonia and northern Thrace, and Jews from Bulgaria itself. On March 11, 1943, in a well-planned operation, 7,341 Macedonian Jews were caught and imprisoned in a provisional transit camp established in the government tobacco warehouses in Skopje. Over three days, March 22, 25, and 29, 1943, 7,144 of these Jews were deported to the Treblinka death camp. Only 200 Macedonian Jews survived World War 2. Thank you, Yad Vashem, for the above information on Macedonian Jews, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for the photo and information about Leon Franko and Rebecca Pissirilo. #RememberThis

Congratulations to Aliza Luft on the publication of her @Harvard_Press book "Sacred Betrayal: How the French Catholic Church Broke Its Pledge to Protect Jews During the Holocaust." Aliza conducted research as a Claims Conference #SaulKagan Fellow in Advanced Shoah Studies. #HolocaustEducation

Happy birthday, Tova Friedman! Holocaust survivor Tova Friedman was born September 7, 1938, in Gdynia, Poland. After the war broke out, her family moved to Tomaszow Mazowiecki, where 15,000 Jews were crammed into six four-story buildings. However, starvation, shootings and deportation diminished that population, and those that survived were shipped off to Nazi labor camps. Tova’s family was sent to the Starachowice work camp, where her parents worked at an ammunition factory. Having managed to avoid previous selections, at the age of five and a half, Tova and her family were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where her head was shaved and her arm was tattooed. During her six months of incarceration there, Tova survived hunger and disease and is one of a handful of Jews to have entered a gas chamber and lived. Tova and her parents emigrated to the US when she was 12, and today, she continues to share her story across the country. #RememberThis #HolocaustSurvivor #Auschwitz youtu.be/4HN5703289I