The people who carry the story

Yakov Adler (Ya’akov in Hebrew), known as "Jacques" in the resistance, was born on 30 December 1911 in Nuremberg, Germany, to a religious Jewish family. He was the only surviving child of David and Bertha Adler, who ran a tailor shop in the city. In 1930 he began studying medicine at the University of Erlangen, but as conditions for Jews worsened he continued his studies in Zurich, Strasbourg, and finally Paris. When the Nazis took power in 1933, his parents moved to Holland, and Yakov later joined them there. He earned his PhD in 1937 and his Dutch medical certificate in 1939, interning at the Dutch Israelite Hospital and later specializing in pediatrics in Arnhem. It was there he met Betsy "Beckel" de Leeuw, a nurse; they fell in love and married in August 1942. A Nazi raid struck Amsterdam on their very wedding day. Forced into hiding, they moved from place to place with help from the Dutch underground, concealed in cupboards and small villages, where their first daughter, Jacqueline (Yael), was born. After the war the family settled in Steenwijk, where a second daughter, Yemima, arrived in 1946. Yakov’s Zionist convictions had deepened during the war, and he began planning their emigration to Israel. Anticipating the tuberculosis that afflicted many camp survivors, he specialized in the disease, and a third daughter, Yocheved, was born in 1947. The family reached Israel in 1949, where Yakov worked at the tuberculosis hospital in Be’er Ya’akov, eventually serving as department head and deputy director until his retirement. Beyond medicine, Yakov was warm, sociable, and endlessly curious — a Rotary member who loved travel, classical music, history, archaeology, art, and literature, and who could talk with anyone about almost anything. He died in 2007 at the age of 95, surrounded by his wife, three daughters, three sons-in-law, nine grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. His wife Batya passed away in 2012 at the age of 99.

Hymie Anisman received his PhD in 1972 (University of Waterloo), and has been a Professor at Carleton University, Ottawa, since that time. Professor Anisman was a Senior Ontario Mental Health Research Fellow (1999–2006), held a Canada Research Chair in Neuroscience, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. The principle theme of his research has concerned the influence of stressors on neurochemical and neuroendocrine systems, and how these influence psychological (anxiety, depression) and immune-related disorders. His work has spanned animal models to assess stress-related pathology as well as studies in humans to assess stress, coping and appraisal processes. In this regard, he has assessed the impact of chronic strain emanating from discrimination and stigmatization on anxiety, depression, and PTSD among refugees from war-torn regions, and health consequences among Indigenous groups that suffered childhood traumatization, distress associated with abusive relationships, as well as the transmission of trauma effects across generations. Aside from examining diverse vulnerability factors that foster illnesses, his research has also focused on identifying factors that promote resilience in the face of trauma. Professor Anisman has published more than 400 peer-reviewed journal papers and book chapters, two edited books dealing with stress processes and psychoneuroimmunology, and five books concerning stress and health.

Richard Aronowitz works in the international art world and lives in Oxford with his son. His debut novel, Five Amber Beads, tells the story of his mother’s Jewish family during and after the Holocaust. He is the author of three further novels — It’s Just the Beating of My Heart (2010), An American Decade (2017), and Night Comes Down (2025) — and a poetry collection, Life Lessons (2019).

As a child of a Holocaust survivor, Sonia has spent most of her life trying to learn what her parents endured in Germany and figuring out where she belongs. She is blessed with three sons, two step-sons, two daughters-in-law and four grandchildren. Raised and currently spending her time in New Hampshire, Sonia enjoys a few months each year in England. Earning both undergraduate and advanced degrees in NH, USA, she spent most of her career as a management behavioral consultant. As adjunct faculty at a local university, Sonia had the pleasure of teaching interpersonal communication and public speaking. Upon retirement, she turned her lifelong hobby of photography into a small business, called Sonia’s View. As a volunteer in several civic organizations, giving back to her community continues to play a large role in her life. In 2021, Sonia published her first book, Surviving the Holocaust; One Family’s Journey. Since that publication, she has been invited to share her family’s experience and speak about the link of inherited trauma and its impact to synagogues, Holocaust Memorial celebrations on Yom HaShoah, at a local Catholic University, a local bookstore, and senior communities. Sonia has been interviewed by local newspapers. Her book and a videotape interview are now part of a permanent World War II exhibition at the Nashua, NH Historic Society.

Adena J. Bernstein is an award-winning author, prosecutor, and speaker. Her debut book, Living among the Dead, received the 2022 IAN Book of the Year Award for Outstanding Non-Fiction, the 2020 Readers’ Favorite Gold Medal in Non-Fiction Biography, and First Place at the Royal Dragonfly Book Awards. The book has been translated into Spanish and Polish, and its accompanying Educator’s Guide (2022) is used worldwide to support Holocaust education. Her second book, Stolen Legacies: The Fight for Nazi-Looted Art, received First Place in the Current Events category at the 2026 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Bernstein is the granddaughter of two Holocaust survivors. Her grandmother’s firsthand accounts of persecution and survival shaped her lifelong commitment to historical truth, justice, and remembrance. She regularly speaks to schools, universities, museums, and community organizations. A career prosecutor, Bernstein has handled cases involving child sexual abuse, domestic violence, and public safety. She currently serves as an Assistant Attorney General, overseeing foreign extraditions and leading statewide initiatives focused on fentanyl policy, prevention, and accountability. Her book, Stolen Legacies: The Fight for Nazi-Looted Art, examines unresolved Holocaust-era art theft through legal analysis, investigative history, and personal narrative. Bernstein lives in Arizona and is the mother of three.

Laura Beth Bakst is a lawyer and an especially proud granddaughter. Her grandparents’ experiences influenced her decision to pursue a career in law. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University, where much of her coursework focused on anti-discrimination studies, and a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School. Laura spent years researching her family history, interviewing survivors, and writing The Shoemaker’s Son so that her ancestors’ heroic acts—and the horrors inflicted on them—are documented and preserved for future generations.

Omer Bartov was born and raised in Israel, where he taught history for several years at Tel Aviv University. Shortly before moving to the United States in the late 1980s, he published two Hebrew-language novels, as well as several poems and short stories. Over the last few decades, Bartov has published many historical studies, including, most recently, Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (Simon and Schuster, 2018), which received the National Jewish Book Award and was translated to multiple languages, and Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past (Yale University Press, 2022). Bartov teaches at Brown University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Butterfly and the Axe is his first English-language novel.

Aleksandr Bergman (1925–2016) was born in Riga, the capital of then independent Republic of Latvia. He was the second of three sons in the family of a public educator. Aleksander was 15 when World War II reached Latvia, first with the occupation by the Red Army from the east in 1940, then with the Nazi invasion from the west in 1941. From 1941 to 1945, he was a prisoner in the Riga Ghetto and three concentration camps – Kaiserwald (Latvia), Stutthof (Poland), and Buchenwald (Germany). After returning to Riga in 1945 he entered the law school of Latvian State University. In 1947 he married Josephina Itzykson (1927–1986). They had two children, son Jean and daughter Eleonora. In addition to a prominent legal career, Aleksandr Bergman has taken an active part in strengthening the Riga Jewish community. After the collapse of the USSR and the re-establishment of the sovereign Republic of Latvia in 1991, he became the chairman of the newly created Latvian Ghetto and Concentration Camps Prisoners Association, representing former prisoners of ghettos and concentration camps, and their descendants. The work of the organization, led by Aleksandr Bergman for over two decades, now continues both in Latvia and the United States, including the publication of this book.

Author, poet, educator and scientist, Annette Libeskind Berkovits was born in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet Republic, near China’s western border. She is the daughter of Polish Jews who survived World War II in Soviet gulags. Daniel Libeskind, the noted international architect and master planner for rebuilding Ground Zero in New York, is Annette’s brother. Annette received her primary education in Łódz, Poland and in Tel Aviv, Israel. On her arrival in New York as a teenager Annette entered the highly selective Bronx High School of Science not speaking a word of English, the only student to ever be admitted without taking the required entrance exam. She earned a BS in Biology from City College of the City University in New York in its heyday and, later, a master’s degree in Educational Administration and Supervision from Manhattan College. In her three-decade career with the Wildlife Conservation Society, based at New York’s Bronx Zoo, Annette became one of the Society’s first female Senior Vice Presidents. During her tenure, she led the institution’s nationwide and worldwide science education programs and spearheaded partnerships among school systems and conservation organizations. Berkovits negotiated the first ever agreement to bring environmental education to China’s schools, long before China became an industrial power. Later her programs spread to Papua New Guinea, Bhutan, Cuba, India and elsewhere. For several years, she served as the Chair of the International Association of Zoo Educators. Even before being elected to lead the international association, she convened the First Pan American Congress for Conservation Education in Venezuela attended by representatives from dozens of nations. Recognized for her leadership in the field of science education by the National Science Foundation, Berkovits authored and edited numerous science education publications for children and teachers. She continues to pursue her life-long love of writing full time. Berkovits and her husband divide their time between Manhattan and Florida.

Roslyn Bernstein has been a storyteller all her life, sometimes working for a true account in the narrow sense as a journalist when it’s reporting or history, and sometimes in a wider, more resonant sense when composing poetry, short stories, or a novel. As a journalist, she has reported in-depth cultural stories for venues including Guernica, Tablet, Arterritory, and Huffington Post. While reporting on all forms of art and architecture, documentary photography has been a major subject of Bernstein’s writing and teaching since the 1970s. Sixty of her online pieces were reprinted in an anthology, Engaging Art: Essays and Interviews From Around the Globe. She is the author of a collection of linked fictional tales, Boardwalk Stories, set in a seaside community during the 1950s, and the co-author of a history of SoHo, Illegal Living: 80 Wooster Street and the Evolution of SoHo, which focuses on one building to tell the story of SoHo’s transformation from a manufacturing district to a live-work arts community. The Girl Who Counted Numbers was inspired by the seven months that Roslyn Bernstein spent in Jerusalem in 1961. She has tried to be attentive to historical details although the story of Susan Reich, her family, and friends is fictional.

Growing up in New York in the late 1960s, Audrey Birnbaum assumed that watching Holocaust documentaries was a perfectly normal family activity. On her first day of elementary school, Audrey sat in the cafeteria, unwrapped her liverwurst sandwich, and excitedly told her new classmates about her public television proclivities. Her Brady Bunch-watching peers had never heard of PBS, but they had heard of PB&J (and they weren’t too keen on liverwurst either). They made it abundantly clear: Audrey’s childhood was, in fact, not normal at all. We will never know whether it was schoolyard bullying or watching tragic Shoah documentaries that was responsible for Audrey’s acute sensitivity to others; but that empathy may have helped pave the way for her choice of medicine as a career. Audrey chose to specialize in Pediatric Gastroenterology — for who needed more help than children; and where could anyone feel more suffering than in one’s gut? Day after day, she watched intricate family dynamics play out in the context of fragile health. Audrey listened to each patient’s story until she could retell it with clarity and give it meaning. Through witnessing and recording these tender dramas, the seeds of writing had been planted. Those seeds took root when, shortly after her father’s death in 2018, Audrey stumbled upon his extensive notes detailing his childhood escape from Nazi Germany. Audrey felt compelled to start writing his riveting story – a story addressing themes that are pressingly relevant today. American Wolf deals with tragedy and loss, while punctuating the triumph of the human spirit. It is a memoir of Holocaust survival, a family drama, an immigration tale, and an often funny coming-of-age story that is sure to have an impact on anyone who has experienced prejudice, displacement, or questions about their identity. With her cherished medical career in the rear-view mirror, Audrey now enjoys singing, writing, reading, and being with friends who also had quirky childhoods. She lives with her husband in Westchester County, New York, and has three marvelous grown children. Audrey is currently working on her second book.

Nechama Birnbaum knew since she was a little girl that she would write her grandmother’s story. Her friend’s grandmas brought them presents, hers brought her stories. Lucky for her, stories were her favorite thing of all, especially the story of one stubborn redhead’s determination to survive. Nechama lives in Brooklyn NY with her husband and daughters and son.

Harry D Pila was born in Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium on March 15, 1941. Due to the deterioration of life for Jews in Nazi-occupied Belgium, he was given to Gerard and Germaine Decraene, a childless Gentile couple at the age of 6 weeks. Unbeknown to Harry’s parents, Gerard was a double agent working for the U.K. Harry’s parents, who were active in the underground, feared that if they were caught by the Gestapo, it would not only be the end for them, but also for their son. They were, in fact caught, and his father was killed towards the end of the war. His mother survived Auschwitz and was reunited with Harry in at the end of WWII. In November 1954, Harry and his mother emigrated to Fort Worth, Texas, following his stepfather Max. He continued his studies, graduating from the University of Texas, Austin with a BA in Foreign trade in 1966. He got married to Susan in 1962, and the next year their son Jay was born. Harry and Susan share 4 grandchildren. The youngest girl is currently serving in the Israel Defense Force which makes him very proud. He has always felt that if Israel had existed in the 1930s, there never would have been a Holocaust. Harry has been active over the years in various organizations including the International US chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club while residing and working in Taiwan from 1970 to 1981. More recently, he has been active in the Holocaust Council of Metrowest, New Jersey and various other organizations and charities. He resides in New Jersey and Florida. Before devoting her career to Holocaust research and writing, Robin Black held positions as an elementary school teacher, a children’s librarian, and a caterer. The Journey of a Hidden Child is her third book.

Martin is the author of 11 books, including the popular Emoji Haggadah and Shakespeare Haggadah. With Zaidy’s War he presents an eye-opening project 19 years in the making. Martin interviewed his grandfather about his WWII experience, and learned a story that absolutely baffles the mind with continent-ranging survival tales, Axis and Ally bullets and bombs, narrow harrowing escapes, and steadfast dedication to create an honorable life.

I am a physician, writer, and mom. I am also the child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors. I have been fascinated for years about the legacy I carry. It is a heavy one. In my new book I explore the science of epigenetics, the idea that traumatic life events change one’s genes, and that these altered genes may be passed along to subsequent generations (such as myself). In the book I recount the way my grandparents managed to save both themselves and their young children in the darkest days of European history. The book is an homage to my dad, a child survivor who was a ‘hidden child’, sequestered in a Belgian convent for 2 1/2 years when he was only a toddler.

Janet Bond Brill was born and raised in New York City, the daughter of a prominent stage and screen actor and a psychoanalyst. After graduating from Walden School at 16 and earning her B.S. in Biology from the University of Miami, she spent seven years as a flight attendant for Pan American World Airways before returning to academia. Dr. Brill holds a PhD in Exercise Science from the University of Miami, along with two master’s degrees, one in Exercise Science from the University of Miami and another in Nutrition Science from Florida International University. She is the author of four nationally recognized health books, including Cholesterol Down and Blood Pressure Down, published by Random House, as well as numerous scientific papers and articles for lay publications. Her scientific training taught her to meticulously research and document evidence, skills she applied to preserving Edna’s testimony with historical accuracy. For 37 years, Dr. Brill knew and loved her mother-in-law, Holocaust survivor and WWII child hero, Edna Stefania Brill. Their profound bond and Edna’s trust in sharing her story inspired Dr. Brill to move from health writing to historical memoir, determined to record Edna’s experiences for future generations: her first memoir and her most important work. She believes that preserving survivor testimony is essential not only to honor those who perished and those who survived, but also to illuminate the catastrophic consequences of unchecked hatred and to awaken humanity’s obligation to stand against it. Dr. Brill lives in Pennsylvania with her husband Sam, Edna’s son. Together they have three children, Rachel, Mia, and Jason, with Mia named for Edna’s sister Miriam. They also have two grandchildren who carry forward their great-grandmother’s legacy into the next generation.

Julie Brill is a lactation consultant, childbirth educator, doula, and the author of the anthology Round the Circle: Doulas Share their Experiences. Her essays have appeared in various publications, including Haaretz, the Forward, Balkan Insight, Kveller, Cognoscenti, and Hey Alma. She shares her family’s experiences in the Shoah with middle and high school students through Living Links. The mother of two grown daughters, Julie lives near Boston, Massachusetts

Debbie J. Callahan resides with her husband Scott, and the greatest cat in the world, Calvin, in Downeast Maine. Callahan is a high school teacher instructing English and Exploring the Holocaust through Film and Literature. Over the years, she has worked with Holocaust survivors and liberators, and volunteered at a Holocaust center. Additionally, she worked alongside the mayor of her city to coordinate Holocaust Remembrance events. She now devotes much of her time to writing and teaching about the importance of Holocaust Remembrance and Education. Her books and lectures focus on everything from the danger of hatred, racism, and Antisemitism, to fighting Holocaust denial and the personal responsibility of sharing the stories of survivors, rescuers, liberators, and victims for future generations. In doing so, she fulfills her promise to survivors that their stories will not die with them and they will not be forgotten. Callahan writes and speaks to assure those who died at the hands of the Nazis did not die as statistics, numbers of dehumanized, faceless victims. She tells instead the stories of people who lived, worked, and loved; thus, sharing the humanity and legacies for generations to come.

Jennifer Landau-Carter was born and raised on 90 Charles Street, where she mastered the arts of stoop-sitting and people-watching, both of which remain her principal passions. She is the third generation to tell the family story: in 2018, the experiences of her uncle George Landau were chronicled in the documentary film Lies and Miracles: Childhood in a Siberian Labor Camp, and her grandfather Meier Landau’s memoir A Lost World, published posthumously in 2023, describes the family’s deportation and life in the Soviet Gulag. Jennifer holds a BA from Harvard in Social Anthropology, an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University in Organizational Behavior, and a Doctorate from the Università degli Studi di Parma, Italy in Economics of Public Administration. Her professional career began in Bocconi University School of Management as Professor of Organizational Behavior in Milan, Italy, she then opened Poise, a hair salon in Portland, Oregon, and lastly she was a diplomat for the U.S. government, serving on four continents. Jennifer is only “aspirationally retired,” since the renovation of 90 Charles Street is ongoing and very stressful.

Sonia Case is the youngest daughter of German/Austrian refugees who arrived in England shortly before the outbreak of war. Born in the 1950s, the first child of Ruth who married Josef, a new widower and father to two young girls, she grew up knowing little of her parents’ harrowing experiences. She developed an early love of theater and pursued acting in her mid-twenties before entering the world of advertising during the heady 1980s. Stories remained central and a long teaching career allowed her to share a love of literature, theatre and the rich world of the imagination.

Ignacy Chiger (1906–1975), a resourceful Jewish businessman who defied the odds in Nazi-occupied Poland, masterminding a high-stakes plan to save his family by vanishing into the sewers of Lvov, where they survived in darkness for over a year.

Navina Michal Clemerson was born in London, UK, to refugee parents and spent much of her childhood in France. She obtained degrees in biology and psychology.  After some years in Israel, the Netherlands and Italy, she settled with her family in Wellington, New Zealand, where she enjoys an unruly garden.

Samuel Cox is a retired US Army Reserve officer, an educator for four decades, and a lifelong student of the Holocaust. He taught various history courses for many years, including courses on the Holocaust, and served as a K–12 private school headmaster in Virginia and North Carolina for more than 20 years. He holds a B.S. from Wake Forest University, a B.A. from Oregon State University, an M.S. from the University of South Carolina, and an M.A. from The College of William & Mary, along with additional graduate coursework at several other universities. From 1994 to 1999, he taught a Holocaust class at St. Johns Country Day School in Orange Park, Florida, where he came to know the ten friends he writes about in this book. Sam resides in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Erin, and has three grown children.

Paul Davidovits was born in 1935 in Moldava, a small town in Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia). His father died when Paul was not quite three years old. His mother and he then moved back to Humenne, his mother’s home town. Two years later she re-married. They survived the Holocaust by using forged documents, and rapidly moving from town to town whenever anyone appeared to become suspicious of their identities. By the time WWII ended, all of Paul’s paternal family and most of his maternal family had been killed, including his mother’s second husband. Paul’s mother married the third time, and in 1949 the remnant of the family immigrated to Toronto, Canada. There Paul completed high school and a three-year program in Electrical Technology. After working for a year in industry as an electrical technologist, Paul married, and he and his wife moved to New York City. Here Paul continued his education at Columbia University, receiving the B.S. (1960), M.S. (1961) and Ph.D. (1964) degrees in a joint program in Physics and Electrical Engineering. In 1964–1965 he was appointed at Columbia University as Research Associate in Physics and Lecturer in Electrical Engineering. In 1965 he joined the faculty at Yale University as Assistant Professor of Applied Science (1965–1970), and then as Associate Professor (1970–1974). In 1974 he accepted an appointment at Boston College as Professor of Chemistry, a position he retained for 46 years, teaching and conducting research in physical chemistry. From 1994 to 1998 he was Chairman of the Boston College Chemistry Department. During his tenure at Boston College, he was also a consultant for 40 years at Aerodyne Research Inc. in Billerica MA, where together with Aerodyne scientists he studied the basic physico-chemical properties of gas-liquid interactions relevant to atmospheric chemistry and climate change. He has been married since 1957 and has two adult children. He is an avid hiker as well as a swimmer and a cyclist.

Bettie Lennett Denny grew up in Kew Gardens Hills, New York. From an early age, she aspired to be an author, although it took many decades to realize that goal. In retirement, Bettie has written the historical novel Burying My Dead and the social drama Angel Unfolding. Returning to her family’s stories after years of deliberation, In the Wake of Madness has been a labor of love and historical awakening, a realization of how deeply the scourge of Nazism affected even the fortunate survivors. 
Prior to retirement, Bettie worked at KETV, the ABC Television affiliate in Omaha, Nebraska for 25 years. While taking care of her aging mother, she began working directly with nonprofit organizations. There, in the Heartland, she met her husband, Patrick, and raised two girls who are now accomplished professionals and busy, loving parents in their own right. Good fortune has brought them together in the city of Portland, Oregon.

Deborah Donnelly was born to immigrant parents. Education and reading were emphasized growing up. Her parents stressed that anything could be accomplished through commitment and working hard. Deborah is the daughter of Holocaust survivor Hank Brodt (1925–2020). The book was written at her father’s request to document his experiences during the darkest period in modern history. Deborah has a BSW and MSW, holds a LCSW and various credentials in trauma and substance abuse. She is married to Dan.

Caroline is an immigrant to the USA. Over the past 20 years, Caroline has worked as a biology professor, the chief executive officer (CEO) of a startup company, the president of a nonprofit, a private tutor, a technical writer, a research scientist, a consultant, and a communications expert. Caroline currently works as a speaker, maintains a website and blog, and is the author or coauthor of fourteen nonacademic books. More information on Caroline’s writings can be found at https://RamblingRuminations.com. Caroline is married to Richard and has four grown children and eight grandchildren. Meta Evenbly, who lived the story told in Brave Face, was born in 1935 to a Dutch father and a German mother and grew up in the Netherlands. When she had just turned 17 years old, she met the love of her life, Frits, who was born to Dutch parents in the Congo, but then grew up in the Netherlands. Meta raised her five children in three different countries, none of them her country of origin. She graduated cum laude with a degree in Liberal Arts from St. Thomas University in philosophy, psychology, and theology at the age of 59.

Fred was born near Baku, Azerbaijan as his family was fleeing from the German army during World War II. After the war, as Holocaust survivors, they eventually escaped the Soviet Union to refugee collection centers in Poland and were transferred to several displaced persons camps in Austria, where they remained for three years trying to obtain visas to immigrate to the United States. He arrived at age 7 with his family in the United States, unable to speak English, and went through the public-school system in South Bend, Indiana from kindergarten through high school. Fred graduated as a high school valedictorian, attended the University of Chicago as an undergraduate and Purdue University where he received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry. From the time Fred was a child, he developed a passion for collecting stories and photographs of his extensive and exceptional family history. As an adult, and while fully engaged in his professional activities, He conducted myriad interviews of survivors and his family, extensively documented all their photographs and history, and has conducted presentations on them. Since retirement, he has produced a 4 DVD video-documentary of his family’s history and used that material as a basis for writing his book. While he considers the book a memoir, it could easily fit into the genre of a non-fiction narrative. While there are a number of historical fiction books describing events of this era, there are few authors remaining that survived these experiences that can describe them with such detail and veracity and relate them to current times. While he could have grown up to be a goat herder in Azerbaijan, his progression from those horrible times to becoming a top scientist adds an interesting and unusual thread to his story. Beyond expectations from his unique beginnings, Dr. Feldman worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 30 years becoming a Senior Vice President and Chief Science Officer with global responsibilities and chairing an international world-class scientific advisory board. His expertise was in the application of science to industrial processing for the development of advanced therapeutics, especially in the treatment of life-threatening congenital inherited diseases. He developed several “First-in-class” products that have been registered and distributed globally. He has been invited and participated in industry conferences as a keynote speaker and presented in venues around the world.

Grace Feuerverger was born and raised in her beloved city of Montréal surrounded by a multitude of languages and cultures inside and outside her home. She is professor emerita of education and ethnography at the University of Toronto, and taught courses on language, culture and identity as well as peace education for many years. Grace was educated at McGill University, the Università per Stranieri in Perugia, Italy, the University of California at Berkeley, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the University of Toronto. She has also been an invited member of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO for many years. Among her many publications are two award-winning books: Oasis of Dreams (about a cooperative Jewish-Palestinian village in Israel) and Teaching, Learning and Other Miracles (about education as a sacred life journey). Although now retired, her heart will always be in the classroom with her students. Grace and her husband divide their time between Berkeley and Toronto.

Born in Riga to a well-educated Jewish family, Valentina Freimane (1922–2018) lived in Riga, Paris, and Berlin as a child, but returned to Riga with the rise of Nazism in Germany. She married a Latvian medical student and went into hiding when Germany occupied Latvia, but she lost most of her family in the Riga ghetto. In Latvia, she became a well-known film and theater critic and scholar. She has published extensively in the arts. Her memoir, Return to Atlantis (2010), documents her losses, life, and career and has been published in Latvian, Russian, Lithuanian, German, and English.

Max J. Friedman was born in Sweden to Sam and Frieda, Polish-Jewish parents who met and married there after their liberation from Bergen-Belsen and then emigrated to the US in 1952. Max and his sister grew up knowing little about their parents’ true experiences — the years of ghettos, slave labor and concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and the devastating loss of their families. As their parents aged, Max and his sister came to understand that caring for them meant becoming survivors themselves. After a BA from Columbia College and a Master’s in Journalism from UC Berkeley, Max spent five decades in journalism, public television, corporate communications and his own editorial consultancy. He is married, with twin sons and two grandchildren. Prompted by a question from his grandson, Max set out to uncover the truth of his parents’ survival, traveling to Poland, Germany, Israel and Sweden. The result, Painful Joy, transforms Sam and Frieda from damaged survivors into people whose full, complicated humanity is finally seen.

Michelle Friedman is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst whose life and work explore active, compassionate listening and the resilience of the human spirit. Her first book, co-authored with Dr. Rachel Yehuda, The Art of Jewish Pastoral Counseling: A Guide for All Faiths comes out of Michelle’s professional experience teaching rabbinical students. Divine Corners offers her personal struggle to find meaning and repair in the form of a memoir about her growing up on a chicken farm in the Catskills as a child of Holocaust survivor parents.

Jonathan Gardiner was born in England in 1953, to parents who had both taken part in World War II but had not witnessed the full horrors. He was educated at his local Grammar School in “middle England” and then went to College in London to train as a teacher. He taught in primary schools for nearly 40 years and ended his career as a well-known headteacher. He is married with two children. In the past 10 years Jonathan has become interested in Jewish Performers in Weimar Germany. He has helped to research the life of Willy Rosen, a famous Jewish composer and song lyricist, imprisoned at Westerbork. One-way Ticket from Westerbork is a culmination of a life-time’s reading and interest in the Holocaust. A story that he felt needed to be told.

Jeannette Grunhaus de Gelman is a Venezuelan professor, researcher, and writer. She was born in Szczecin. Poland in 1946, to Polish Holocaust survivors who came from Wlodawa. Her family emigrated to Venezuela, settling in Maracaibo. Gelman received her undergraduate degree in French from Wellesley College. In 1970, she went on to receive an MA in Spanish Literature from New York University via their extension program in Madrid and in 1976 was awarded her MA in the teaching of French from the Université de Paris III. She was a professor of French Language and Literature at the Universidad del Zulia in Maracaibo from 1971 to 1996. Travelling was one of her passions but finally in 2013 she moved to Miami, Florida with a purpose in mind. As Second-Generation Holocaust Survivor, her parents’ trauma was always present in her life and she felt the need to understand what happened to the family she never had. From 2013 to 2018 she was accepted as a Research Scholar at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, focusing on Holocaust studies. As a result, she wrote On Sunny Days We Sang that was first published in Spanish in 2018 under the title En los días claros cantábamos. It is the author’s first full length work, telling the story of her parents’ survival in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War. Before the Covid pandemic, Gelman had the opportunity to lecture-high school seniors and college students on the events that lead to the destruction of Polish Jewish life. She expects to continue with these activities in the future.

Barbara Gilford began as an educator and later maintained a clinical practice in psychotherapy for almost twenty-five years before writing Heart Songs, A Holocaust Memoir. Her MSW degree from Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University, formalized her lifelong quest to understand how people work out their lives. Trauma, loss and suffering in her clients engendered in her deep appreciation for the strength and resilience embedded in the human psyche and spirit. The author contributed more than 200 articles on dance to The New York Times, New Jersey Weekly section and won two awards for her journalism. Barbara is an accomplished presenter who has told her family’s story in high schools and colleges, at an off-off Broadway theatre in New York, in a synagogue and at a Jewish Community Center. In addition to writing, Barbara reads and immerses herself in film, classical music, ballet and Broadway. She enjoys art museums, European travel and also her home in Morris County, New Jersey.

Holocaust survivor Luba Wrobel Goldberg (1923 – 2022) was born and raised in Ciechanowiec, Poland. She attended the Zionist Tarbut school. After her father’s sudden death, Luba was sent by her mother to nearby Bialystok to study dressmaking at ORT Trade school. Little did Luba know at the time that this trade would later save her life more than once. After the war Luba married Chaim Goldberg, a Holocaust survivor from Sokoly, Poland. They fled Poland due to persistent antisemitism and were put in a Displaced Persons Camp in Waldenburg, Germany, where daughter Goldie was born, and soon, a son, Jack, in Milan, Italy. In 1949 they emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, aboard the Napoli. In Melbourne, Luba and Chaim worked 16 hours days in manual labor. They opened a shmatte shop with their savings in Brunswick. Luba’s shop became a haven where women gathered to receive advice, blessings, and clothing, free of charge if in need. In her early seventies, Luba studied VCE English. Most of Luba’s inner circle were Holocaust survivors, but Luba loved to meet people from all walks of life, young and old. She would smile, advise, and stress the importance of optimism and faith.

Sharon Citrin Goldstein, an ordained Cantor and MA graduate in Jewish Education from Hebrew College with valedictorian honors, has shared her passion for Judaism through sermons and song. She has performed for the Hidden Child Foundation and dedicated nearly twenty years to ADL’s Connecticut region, educating and empowering thousands of students and their families to confront antisemitism. Her writings on Judaism and family heritage appear in numerous publications, including Moment, JewishGen, the Connecticut Literary Anthology, and Tell Your Story Challenge of West Palm Beach, where she was a short-story finalist. Paul Goldstein is a native New Yorker who grew up with Polish Jewish immigrant parents. He earned an MBA in Marketing with honors from Babson College. After a career of creating ad campaigns for major brands, he taught Marketing and Advertising at universities in New York City and Connecticut. As the son of Holocaust survivors, he’s become a prominent Holocaust presenter and educator, speaking at hundreds of schools, religious and civic organizations, and on podcasts. He has been honored as a keynote speaker at the University of New Haven, the Jewish Historical Society, and before the United States District Court.

Joseph Gosler was born in Groningen, the Netherlands during WWII and after the war he migrated to Israel with his family and subsequently to the United States, where he has lived since. His life’s journey has been a circuitous one and as a result he has often meandered off the main road. This is best exemplified by the 20 plus years it took him to achieve his BA in History and MBA in corporate finance through the City University of New York. For nearly 40 years he has worked in educational settings ranging from day care centers to private schools in the capacity of Business Manager. He and his wife founded a pre-school called Beginnings Nursery, have one son and live in New York City. Mr. Gosler retired from Friends Seminary in 2004, and today is actively involved in several Quaker projects, writing, gardening, traveling and walking his dog. “Searching for Home”, describing his life as a Hidden Child, is his international debut.

Leah Grisham is a freelance writer whose work focuses on Judaism, feminism, and literature. She received her PhD in English from George Washington University in 2020, where her work focused on Victorian novels that resist patriarchal social norms. Her first book, an academic monograph titled Heroic Disobedience: The Forced Marriage Plot and the British Novel, 1747–1880, was published in 2023. The World Has Caught Fire grew out of her longstanding interest in Holocaust memory, especially the stories that get forgotten. This is her first work of narrative nonfiction. She lives in Ohio with her husband and two young children. Her writing can also be found in magazines like Kveller, Lilith, and on her blog leahshewrote.com.

Evelyn Joseph Grossman was raised in Trenton, New Jersey, by parents who couldn’t separate themselves from their German past and German accents. She grew up in home celebrating Jewish holidays, a connection she continues today as an active member of  The Jewish Center in Princeton.  She earned a bachelor’s degree from Douglass College, Rutgers University, and a master’s degree from Fordham University. In her professional life, she worked as a financial analyst in the field of commercial debt obligations. In retirement, she has focused on writing her parents’ story, honoring the rescuers as Righteous Among the Nations, doing volunteer work in social service programs in Trenton, going on bike rides with her husband, Lenny, and taking trips to California to visit her grandkids.

Ardyn Halter is best known for his painting, printmaking and stained-glass. Born in London, he divides his time between the UK and his home in Israel. Ardyn is the son of Roman Halter whose book Roman’s Journey is republished by Amsterdam Publishers. Ardyn’s work is in numerous collections including The British Museum, The Tel Aviv Museum, The Israel Museum, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, The British Library, London. He has designed and made the stained-glass windows for the National Genocide Memorial in Rwanda, St Johns Wood Synagogue London, Alyth Gardens and Highgate Synagogues, and for Cambridge University. Previous books include: The Water’s Edge (Lund Humphries), London 2006; Out of the Water Sport, Diversity and Tolerance, A Portrait of Aqvatikim, Israel’s first Masters swimming club English, Hebrew and Arabic, Israel 2018.

Born in Western Poland in 1927, Roman Halter enjoyed a notable career in the UK after the Second World War as an architect and a teacher of architecture. In 1974 he left architecture and began making stained-glass windows and HM the Queen’s Royal Coat of Arms for British embassies and Crown courts. Halter died in 2012. His paintings of his experiences during the war went on show at Tate Britain and they are all at the Imperial War Museum in London.

Anne Hand was born in 1985 in New York. Her grandmother was a librarian, and she grew up attached to the power of the written word. Her love of books and the worlds they transported her to have always fueled her desire to make change in the world. Anne has spent her career blending research, policy, and practice to create social impact across the Americas and beyond. She is a recognized expert in global education and development, frequently publishing on topics related to technology and social impact. She holds a B.Sc. from McGill University and an Ed.M. from Harvard University.

Willie Handler has reinvented himself on several occasions throughout his work career. He has been a hospital administrator, a government policy manager, an insurance expert, and consultant. Following his retirement from the Ontario public service, Willie began a writing career. He has published three fiction novels and numerus journal articles over the past few years. He is a member of the Canadian Authors Association, Writing Community of York Region, Toronto Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and the Stephen Leacock Association. Willie is active in Toronto’s Holocaust second generation and third generation survivor community, participating in educational programs, commemorative events, and group discussions. He is also a volunteer at the Toronto Holocaust Museum, where he assists students and visitors as they make their way through the museum’s gallery. Willie has spoken online and at in-person events on the Holocaust and his family’s experience.

Nicola Hanefeld was born in 1958 in London and grew up in England, unaware of her Jewish heritage. She has lived in Freiburg in south-west Germany since 1981. Shortly before her father died, he shared never previously mentioned facts about his family. Her father’s revelations sent Nicola on a heart-breaking journey to discover the Holocaust trauma silently embedded in her family. As she is fluent in German, she could understand the historical documents in German which surprisingly came to light during her research. Nicola has a degree in biology, a PhD in maternal health and is a freelance Alexander Technique coach. She’s a mother of three grown-up children and has three grandchildren. https://www.speek.de/en/the-unspeakable

Robert Wolf, M.D., grew up in a suburb of Detroit as the only child of Ervin and Judit Wolf. Their stories of their escape from communist Hungary, and his father’s tragic history of escaping the Nazis twice but losing his own parents at the hands of Joseph Mengele, inspired Robert to document his parents’ tales and share those stories with Jewish groups and others throughout the United States. In his award-winning Not a Real Enemy, Robert shares his family saga—and the forgotten history of the nearly half million Hungarian Jews who were deported and killed during the Holocaust—through an epic and inspiring tale of daring escapes, terrifying oppression, tragedy, and triumph. Janice Harper is a ghostwriter who has ghostwritten eight memoirs and several nonfiction books. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, her ethnography, Endangered Species: Health, Illness and Death Among Madagascar’s People of the Forest was nominated for the Margaret Mead award for anthropology written to appeal to a wide audience. She has been a regular feature blogger for The Huffington Post and Psychology Today.

Dr. Casey J. Hayes earned his PhD in music education from the Steinhardt School of Education, New York University (2009). His doctoral research focused on educational outreach within the LGBTQI+ Choral Movement and led him to be the co-music director of the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus and the founder and director of the Vienna (Austria) Gay Men’s Chorus. Dr. Hayes’ interest in Weimar Germany and its brief yet beautiful emergence of LGBTQI+ culture grew out of his interest in music written to disseminate gay culture, such as Mischa Spoliansky’s Das Lila Lied. His desire to learn more about this vibrant, yet largely unknown period of music history led him to discover the music of Willy Rosen and his fascinating but largely unknown life. In 2021, Casey was selected as an Austrian Fulbright scholar and was named the Fulbright-Botstiber Visiting Professor of Austrian American Studies at the University for Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. His research topic, Rosa Wien; Gay Rights, Schlager and Self-Exile: 1918–1938 focused upon the plight of Vienna’s LGBTQI+ and Jewish cabaret communities during the Anschluss, and their recreation of Viennese cabaret in the United States. Casey currently resides in Vienna.

Rudi Haymann was born in 1921 in Berlin into a German-Jewish family. Expelled by the Nazis in 1938, he escaped to British Palestine, where he became a Kibbutz pioneer. When the Nazi army advanced into Africa, Rudi joined the British Army’s Intelligence Service and fought in Africa, Italy, and Greece.  After the war, in 1948, Rudi settled in Chile, where his parents and sister had found refuge. There, he followed his passion and became an interior designer, pioneering a “modernist” design style, that did not exist in the country at the time.  In his late seventies, Rudi decided to share his story;  he trained himself to write and penned two books, published originally in Spanish. He is currently working on his next book, about his experience as a Designer.

Ronny Hein is a writer, journalist and publicist. He was born in Brazil in 1955, ten years after the end of the Second World War. He is the son and son-in-law of concentration camp survivors. The stories of both his mother and father-in-law, among others, are told in this his eleventh book. Six of which have been published in Brazil. As a journalist, he worked in television, radio and on newspapers and principally, magazines. He was a Director of the Brazilian edition of FORBES for four years, the Sunday magazine of the Jornal do Brasil and a number of others. His field of expertise, however, was in creating and directing travel magazines like Viagem e Turismo, Próxima Viagem, Caminhos da Terra, Top Destinos and Lonely Planet Brasil. In this role he had the opportunity to visit and write about 82 different countries. As a publicist he was a copywriter at Delta Propaganda and a partner at Sven Hein & Associados Propaganda, both in São Paulo. He has been awarded a number of prizes throughout his career, eight of which were from the European Tourism Commission. He also received a gold medal of merit from the French government, for his contribution to publicising tourism in France.

Janina Hescheles Altman wrote her first book at the age of twelve as an orphan. She wrote it in hiding, after being rescued from the Janowska concentration camp in Lvov in 1943, two weeks before its liquidation. Her testimony about her experiences in the camp has made her known as the ‘Polish Anne Frank’. It has been the subject of several films and plays and has been translated to nine different languages. The book has now appeared in English and is available in Amazon. Not to be defeated by this traumatic start in life, Janina graduated from highschool while still living in the orphanage and emigrated to Israel in 1950. There, she went on to do her doctorate and become a research scientist in chemistry. She authored scientific, fiction and historical books: Gold – From the Depth of the Earth to Outer Space (1977), Zahava (1977) and The White Rose (2007) about the resistance organisation of German students against the Nazi regime. The first two books written by her in Israel – They are Still Alive (1969), which received the ACUM Israeli prize, and What Will Tomorrow Bring (1972) appeared under the pseudonym Zvia Eitan. Janina married the physicist Colman Altman and has two sons, Eitan and Zwi. A lifelong defender for human values, today at 89, Janina continues to demonstrate with the peace movement ‘Women in Black’ in Haifa.

Natalie Hess was born in Poland and survived the Holocaust, including imprisonment in Ravensbrück concentration camp. After the war, she lived in Sweden, the United States, and Israel, where she worked as an educator and writer. She held an M.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Arizona. She is the author of Remembering Ravensbrück: From Holocaust to Healing, her award-winning memoir. She died in 2023.

Michael Hickins is the author of the acclaimed short story collection The Actual Adventures of Michael Missing (Alfred A. Knopf), the novels Blomqvist and The What Do You Know Contest, and the memoir I Lived in France and So Can You (Dzanc Books). Hickins was born in Queens, New York, and plied his trade as a journalist with The Wall Street Journal, eWeek, and Women’s Wear Daily. He lives with his wife and son in the deep dark woods of Westchester County, New York, USA.

Wendy Holden was a respected journalist and war correspondent for eighteen years covering news stories around the world, including the Middle East, the USA, and Eastern Europe. She is the author of three novels and more than thirty non-fiction titles, most of which feature inspirational people and many of them international bestsellers. They include Born Survivors, the story of three mothers who hid their pregnancies from the Nazis; Tomorrow to Be Brave about the only woman in the French Foreign Legion, soon to be a film; One Hundred Miracles about a musical prodigy who survived three concentration camps, and Behind Enemy Lines featuring a French Jewish spy, now an award-winning documentary. Wendy’s first novel The Sense of Paper was published by Random House, New York. Her second, The Cruelty of Beauty, is published in Europe and is to be made into a TV film. She also wrote Mr Scraps, a novella about the first search and rescue dog in the London Blitz. She lives on a small farm in Suffolk, England, with her husband and two dogs.

Wolf Holles was born in Nürnberg, Germany in 1931. Understanding that Hitler’s Germany would be no place for Jews, his parents decided to move the family to safety in Holland. There Wolf enjoyed an idyllic childhood until Holland was also not safe for Jews, and the nightmare began. Through the German occupation, deportation to Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen, and a voyage on the famous Lost Train, this haunting blend of fiction and true events based on Wolf’s youth, traces a life lived in the shadow of the most dramatic events of the 20th century and its aftermath.

Janet Horvath is a lifelong performing classical musician, soloist, speaker, educator, and author. The Minnesota Orchestra’s associate principal cello from 1980 to 2012, she has appeared as soloist with orchestra, and in recital and chamber music throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. She has appeared on national radio and television, including the BBC, CBC, and NPR and on podcasts.
A contributing writer for the online classical music e-magazine Interlude.HK, she has penned over 350 feature articles about music and musicians. Recent essays have appeared in national publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Minneapolis Star Tribune and international music publications Musical America, Chamber Music America, Strings Magazine, The Brass Herald and Strad Magazine. The author of the award-winning book Playing (Less) Hurt—an Injury Prevention Guide for Musicians, she has worked with instrumentalists to establish a holistic approach to music making. A pioneer and authority in the area of the medical problems of performing artists, and a passionate arts advocate, Janet is well-known among both amateur and professional musicians, teachers and students, and health care providers. Her masterclasses and seminars have been well received by orchestras including the San Francisco Symphony, Utah Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, and Boston Symphony Orchestra, and at colleges, conservatories, and conferences from coast to coast. 
Through her writing and musical performances, Janet creates restorative conversations, offers spiritual sustenance, and explores music’s life-bringing and healing power. In the age of fast-moving news, despite our best efforts, uncertainty and divisiveness prevail. Janet hopes to counteract the consequences of intolerance and endeavors to stimulate dialogue about inequality and the ramifications of racism. Ms. Horvath earned her master’s degree in music performance from Indiana University and completed her MFA in creative writing at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. 
Look for her classical music articles which appear at www.interlude.hk. More information can be found on her website www.janethorvath.com.

Born in London in 1953 to Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Europe, Helen Joyce graduated from University College, London with BSc (Hons) in Psychology. After relationship counselling training and some years of clinical research, Helen took up teaching. She taught Psychology in Colleges of Further Education around London and at Immanuel College, Bushey where she was Head of Sixth Form. She retired to Israel in 2013 together with her husband Alan. The couple is blessed with three children, children-in-law and a brood of growing grandchildren. Helen enjoys swimming, gardening, reading, quizzes, word games and writing.

Fiona Kelmann is the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors. She holds bachelor’s degrees in law and arts, as well as a postgraduate diploma in Human Rights Law. Fiona worked as a lawyer and law lecturer before undertaking a course in Holocaust studies at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum. From 2012 to 2019, she served as an Education Officer at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum, and from 2020 to 2025, she held the role of Assistant Curator. She continues to work on projects at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum. Fiona is the editor of Spark of Hope, the autobiography of her grandmother, Luba Goldberg, published by Amsterdam Publishers in 2024. Irmgard. The Girl from Dresden marks her debut as an author.

Johanna Kinney was born in 1925 in Java, Indonesia, in what was then a Dutch colony. In 1930 her family returned to live in the Netherlands. During wartime both she and her brother Evert were involved in the Underground, her brother subsequently knighted for distinguished service and bravery. Her own lived experience and those of her associates during wartime inspired Dutch Defense. Je Maintiendrai (French, roughly “I will keep up”) is both the motto of the Dutch monarchy and the slogan of Evert’s Resistance cell, which ultimately had only two survivors. After the war, Johanna married and had two children in Belgium. Her Dutch husband died; she eventually remarried, this time wedding a Canadian officer she’d met 15 years earlier during the time of liberation. Though widowed a second time only 15 years later, she remained persistent: returning to a full-time career at age 50; providing for her five sons while earning degrees in psychology and education; becoming an accomplished educator; and ultimately designing a program for, and instructing, gifted students. She remained an educator into her late sixties. After retiring in 1993, she wrote the first complete version of this book, both at her house in Montreal and largely while she was caring for a new grandchild in Boston. Today she lives in Ottawa, Canada.

Ira served as a professor for over a decade, teaching graduate-level courses at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and Portland State University in Oregon, as well as undergraduate courses at Grays Harbor College in Aberdeen, Washington, Clatsop Community College in Astoria, Oregon, and Western Nevada College in Fallon. Ira is a retired senior U.S. government executive. He is also an attorney, consultant, cruise ship onboard historian, tour guide, commissioner on a county historic commission, and a member of The History Writers Association. He has been featured on television programs, documentaries, radio shows, podcasts, in newspapers and magazines, at national and regional conferences, and at museum and book events. Ira holds Juris Doctor, Master of Science, and Bachelor of Arts degrees. He is a graduate of the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Senior Executive Fellows Program, and other leadership, conflict resolution, and change management programs.

Dr. Anna Kohen, DDS, was born in Vlora, Albania, shortly after World War II and grew up in a small Romaniote Jewish community whose members had been saved from the Nazis by Muslim Albanians. Her family later endured the hardships of the communist dictatorship. In 1966, through careful planning, she and her family escaped Albania and settled in Greece, where she earned her dental degree at the University of Athens. After emigrating to the United States in 1971, she earned a DDS from New York University in 1976 and later taught restorative dentistry there for ten years. She practiced dentistry in Manhattan until retiring to Sarasota, Florida, in 2013. In 1990, Dr. Kohen helped 37 Jewish-Albanian relatives immigrate to the United States and supported their integration. Her longstanding contributions to Albania and its Jewish community have earned her numerous honors, including Albania’s Special Civil Merits medal, the title Honored Citizen of Vlora, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Chapter of the American Albanian National Organization. In 2006, a street in Vlora where her Jewish community had lived was renamed “The Jewish Street” following her efforts to secure recognition of Albania’s Jewish heritage. Dr. Kohen has also devoted herself to humanitarian work, supporting children, Albanian immigrants, cancer screening for uninsured Albanian women, and lifesaving heart surgery for Albanian children. She regularly visits Albanian schools in the Bronx to teach children about oral health and continues to provide moral, emotional, and financial support to the Albanian community.

Nanette Blitz Konig (1929) lives in São Paulo, Brazil, is mother of three, grandmother of six and great grand mother of four. She has written the book to speak in the name of those millions who were silenced forever.

Dr. Robert Krell was born in Holland and survived the Holocaust in hiding. In 1951, his family moved to Vancouver, Canada. Robert was director of child and family psychiatry, often treating Holocaust survivors and their families as well as Dutch survivors of Japanese concentration camps. He established a Holocaust education program for high school students in 1976, an audio-visual documentation program recording survivor testimony in 1978 and assisted with the formation of child survivor groups starting in 1982. Dr. Krell served on the International Advisory Council of the Hidden Child Gathering in New York in 1991. He founded the Vancouver Holocaust Education Center which opened in 1994 and which teaches 20,000 students annually. He has authored and co-edited ten books, twenty book chapters and over fifty journal articles. Dr. Krell continues to write and speak on Holocaust related concerns. He is married to Marilyn and has three children and nine grandchildren. He has received both local, national and international recognition for his life-long work in Holocaust education, remembrance, human rights and social justice.

Peter Kupfer is a freelance writer, editor, and photographer. His stories about business and technology, art and culture, travel, and other subjects have appeared in major newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Observer, and Metropolis magazine. He was a copyeditor at the San Francisco Chronicle for many years.

Andrew Laszlo Sr. was born in Papa, Hungary in 1926. He was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. He emigrated to America after the war arriving in New York Harbor on January 17, 1947. Andrew was penniless and did not speak English. He became a world-famous cinematographer. After keeping his past a secret for 50 years, he shared this memoir with his new family.

Fern Lebo has been writing professionally since 1975. Her last book, The Talent Revolution, was published by The University of Toronto Press and has been translated into three languages. Following the October 7 massacre, Fern began interviewing Jan Blumenstein and writing his memoir. Her evocative style conveys Jan’s courage and tenacious will to live, creating an intimate connection with The Boy in the Back, Jan’s true account of survival as told to Fern, his friend and writing voice.

Margreet Lenstra (1960) is werkzaam als educatief medewerker bij een overheidsarchief. Ze heeft door de jaren heen regelmatig gepubliceerd op gebied van (cultuur-)historie. Daarnaast is zij auteur van verschillende toneelstukken en jeugdmusicals. Ze is de dochter van Chris Lenstra. In 764 Dagen heeft Margreet Lenstra op basis van de oorlogsdagboeken van en gesprekken met haar vader, Chris Lenstra, zijn tijd als dwangarbeider beschreven. Niet alleen door honger, ziekte en verlangen naar huis, maar ook door zware behandeling, treiterijen en tientallen bombardementen was het een moeilijke tijd.

Dr. Walter Leopold was born in 1898 in Ottweiler, Germany, the son of a cantor. Sincere about his Jewish faith but not orthodox, he fought in WWI for the German Imperial Army and received an Iron Cross for bravery in the Macedonia campaigns. After the war he attended Heidelberg University, earning his doctorate with the hope of serving in the new Weimar Republic.  Finding his path blocked because of his religion he secured work within the Jewish community becoming the director of the Reichenheim Orphanage in Berlin. There he met his future wife, Hilda Bluemlein, a pediatric nurse and daughter of a prosperous factory owner in Leipzig.  In 1930, they relocated to Leipzig where Walter worked in the Gemeinde – the city’s semi-autonomous Jewish administration. Although his mother and two brothers emigrated to the United States after the Nazi’s took power, Walter, Hilda and their daughter Anneliese, born in 1937, remained in Germany.  As an anti-Fascist activist, Walter engaged in resistance activities throughout the war. His battle against the Nazi death machine is the story of this memoir. After graduating from Oberlin College and Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (MPA 1975), Les co-founded the Labor Institute (1976), a non-profit organization that designs research and educational programs on occupational safety and health, the environment and economics for unions, worker centers and community organizations. He is the author of Runaway Inequality: An Activist’s Guide to Economic Justice (Labor Institute Press, 2015), How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour: Why Financial Elites Get Away with Siphoning off America’s Wealth (John Wiley and Sons, 2013); The Looting of America: How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It (Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009); The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi (Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2006). The Mazzocchi story won the Independent Publisher Award for best biography.

Charles Liblau was a Jewish communist from Poland who fought in the Spanish Civil War with the International Brigades. He reached France in 1939, joined the Foreign Legion, and then returned to Paris to resist the Nazi occupation. He was arrested there in 1942 and deported to Auschwitz, where he survived for three years. Les Kapos d’Auschwitz, his only book, first appeared in France in 1974. Overlooked at the time, it was later published in Polish and German by the Auschwitz Museum, then appeared in Czech and Italian, and now reaches English-language readers for the first time.

Cynthia Goldstein Monsour studied political science at Barnard College, Columbia University focusing on refugees and human rights. During college, she also studied abroad in Aix-en-Provence, France not far from where her grandfather was interned during World War II. She continued on to law school to pursue her interests in conflict resolution and writing. Currently she lives in New Jersey with her husband, daughter, and two cats.

Katie Moore is a third-time author and published poet, with a degree in Drama and Creative Writing. Obsessed with books from a young age, she was often chastised at school for writing stories instead of paying attention in lessons. Her fascination with romance, LGBTQ+ and historical fiction stretches back decades; the inspiration for “Under the Pink Triangle” springing to life when a hedgehog wandered into her tour group, during a visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. When she is not writing, Katie loves reading, drawing cartoons and photography; her personal mission being to seek out the beauty in everyday life. She also sings in her local choir and volunteers as a DJ at her hometown’s community radio station.

Helen Schary Motro is a writer and attorney whose award-winning writing spans the gamut of opinion journalism in the world’s leading press, including the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe, Haaretz, and Newsweek. Motro is recipient of the Common Ground Award for Journalism in the Middle East. She taught law at Tel Aviv University and was a columnist for The Jerusalem Post. Author of the non-fiction Maneuvering Between the Headlines, her short stories, poetry, and essays appear in anthologies and magazines. As the child of survivors, Motro has written extensively on the Holocaust and the experience of the Second Generation.

Sara Lustigman was born in Eastern Poland in 1924, and was 15 years old when WWII broke and the Nazies entered her small town. In the following three years of the Holocaust she lost her whole family and barely survived as a member of a Jewish partisan group, and later a Soviet partisan unit in the woods of Belarus. After the war she married Misha Omelinski, a partisan fighter from a nearby town, and in 1948 they arrived in Israel. Here they built a new life and a new family. Misha passed away in 1999.

Alexa Morris grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC, dabbling in a number of jobs (Senate page, vet tech, retail) before choosing the world of non-profits, where she remains to this day. She is married to Ben’s daughter and they live in Northern California. In her spare time, she loves hiking and throwing wonky ceramics on the wheel. She is currently at work on her first novel. Ben Parket was born in Paris in 1933 to Jewish parents that emigrated from Poland. In 1942, targeted by Nazis and the French collaborators, he and his family went into hiding in their courtyard. Ben is a retired architect, the father of three children, grandfather to six, who recently celebrated his 91th birthday. He lived in Paris and Tel Aviv before settling happily in Northern California 60 years ago. This is his first book.

Dr. Kenneth P. Price is an award-winning author and clinical psychologist. He studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he was taught by Israel’s national poet Yehuda Amichai and Holocaust survivor and acclaimed novelist Aharon Appelfeld, before graduating magna cum laude in psychology and earning a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Dr. Price taught at the University of Texas Health Science Center before entering independent practice. He has authored more than two dozen scientific articles and co-authored two textbooks on abnormal psychology. Over the course of his career, he has evaluated more than 300 U.S. veterans for service-related psychological injuries. He and his wife, Gloria, have two children and four grandchildren.

Dr. Dorothy Pierce is a retired educator and school administrator. After retirement, she became involved with Jewish organizations, most notably Brandeis University National Women’s Committee and was national president for two years. She instituted the Jewish Cultural Society at Florida Atlantic University in 2008 and served as its president from 2008–2012. Dr. Pierce served as president of the Gilda Malin chapter of Hadassah from 2011–2016 and now serves as vice president of the Gaela Atid chapter of Hadassah. For the past four years, she has chaired the Jewish Cultural Club, a club that provides Jewish cultural programs to the members of her community – Boca Woods Country Club in Boca Raton, Florida. Besides her Jewish activities, Dr. Pierce serves on the board of Boca Woods PAP Corps., a South Florida organization that raises money for cancer research at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Institute at the University of Miami. She lives in Boca Raton, Florida with her husband Stanley, a retired college professor and attorney

Lauren Meyerowitz Port grew up learning about the Holocaust from her grandmother Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz, who was a survivor. Lauren has dedicated many years to preserving her grandmother’s story. She is involved in Jewish organizations to promote Holocaust education and to raise funds for destitute Holocaust survivors today. She holds a master of arts in diplomacy and international relations from Seton Hall University and a bachelor of arts in Spanish from the University of Michigan. She currently works in the field of international trade and resides in New York City with her husband.

Although this is the first novel written by Dr Mark A. Prelas, he is an award-winning author. His works include numerous books, articles and editorials in the fields of science, nonproliferation, energy, the environment and counterterrorism. Mark is a professor emeritus in the college of engineering at the University of Missouri where he began his career in teaching and research in 1979.

Born in Amsterdam in 1946 to German Jewish Holocaust survivors, Shulamit Reinharz is the Brandeis University Jacob Potofsky Professor Emerita of Sociology and a Research Fellow in International Studies at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. She is the former director of the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Program, founder of the Women’s Studies Research Center, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute for the Study of Jews and Gender, and Kniznick Gallery of Feminist Art. The author of 17 books, her topics have ranged from On Becoming a Social Scientist (1979) and Feminist Methods in Social Research (1992) to American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise (2005), Jewish Intermarriage around the World (2009), and One Hundred Years of Kibbutz Life: A Century of Crises and Reinvention (2011), and 100 Jewish Brides: Stories from Around the World (co-edited with Barbara Vinick) (2024). Prof. Reinharz received the 2024 Leo Baeck Medal for “contributions to scholarship and community leadership,” the highest honor bestowed by the Leo Baeck Institute for the study of German Jewish history and culture.

Henry Reiss was born in 1907 in a region of Poland called Galicia. Having survived the Holocaust he began writing his incredible experience as a memoir in the displaced persons camp Ulm, Germany in 1946 and continued after his arrival to Australia. His writing stopped and started when forging a new life required all his efforts. The memoir was written in Polish, translated into English and printed and made available for his family and friends shortly after his death in 1991. His experience and his voice deserve a wider audience. Henry’s voice is authorial, calm, pragmatic, brave and wryly humorous as he describes in detail the events as they unfolded to threaten him and his family. If you had ever wondered how on earth the Holocaust was executed, Henry’s first-person account and gift for narration allows a deep understanding of the Polish, Ukrainian, Jewish, Russian and German interactions that were soils on which the evils of the Holocaust flourished. Henrys resilience and appreciation of life’s beauty prevents the reading of such painful events from becoming overwhelming. Henry survived with his wife Lusia and two children Elzunia and Krysia. Almost all of Henry and Luisa’s extended family including parents, siblings, many aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews were all murdered.

Yohay Jan Remetz was born and raised in pre-WWII Warsaw. Upon the German invasion into Poland he was locked up in the Warsaw ghetto with his family, struggling to sustain daily under the brutal Nazi occupation. Determined to survive, he fled the ghetto, and with endless bravery and wit, took on a Christian identity which eventually led him to work as a German airfield-guard. Under this fake identity he later joined the Polish resistance movement against the Nazis, thereby fulfilling the last two commands of his deceased aunt: survive and avenge.

Lesley Ann Richardson is originally from Queensland, Australia, where she grew up and eventually studied English Literature and Theology. In the 1980s she moved to Israel, and spent a number of years working for different Christian organizations in the land. While there, she met and married her husband, David Richardson, in Christ Church in the Old City of Jerusalem. David was a Canadian, who himself had a remarkable life story, which she also set down in a book. Later she went on to publish Bible Gems from Jerusalem, an award-winning work on history and theology in the feasts of Israel. Lesley is presently living on Vancouver Island, Canada, the home of her late husband, and devoting herself to writing and teaching.

Monica van Rijn is a multi-disciplinary, internationally known visual artist with more than 200 exhibitions to her name. Born in the Netherlands in 1950, the child of two Holocaust survivors, Monica grew up in California, where she studied art, sociology, and philosophy. Her poetry evolved into songwriting while she traveled for a year on her own, after which she settled in Amsterdam. There, she attended painting and writing classes for five years. She interviewed her mother on a regular basis, building a large, interactive “monument of stories” called Colored by War, which she dedicated to all generations impacted by war. She then began guest speaking and writing her parents’ memoir. Through her compelling storytelling, she describes how it was possible to survive so many concentration camps and labor camps. Monica is an inspiring guest speaker who captures the attention of audiences across the globe.

Hands of Gold capitalizes on Roni Robbins’ nearly 35 years as a published writer: as a staff reporter for daily and weekly newspapers; a freelancer for national, regional and online publications; and currently, associate editor of the Atlanta Jewish Times, named the second-best Jewish newspaper in the United States in 2020 by the American Jewish Press Association. Robbins’ articles have appeared in The Huffington Post, Forbes, CNN.com, the New York Daily News, Adweek, WebMD and Healthline. She was a staff writer for Florida Today/USA Today, The Birmingham News and the Atlanta Business Chronicle/American City Business Journals. She’s also written for Mother Nature Network, Daily Report/American Lawyer Media; The Forward, FromTheGrapevine, and Hadassah magazine, among others. In addition to major CEOs and politicians, she’s interviewed such celebrities as Wolf Blitzer, Andy Gibb, Hank Aaron and Usher. In 2009, Hands of Gold was a quarterfinalist for historical fiction in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Robbins also won three Simon Rockower Awards for Jewish journalism, including an investigative piece about Jewish seniors who feel “Out of Touch” in nursing homes. Hands of Gold begins and ends in a nursing home. Her other newswriting awards come from The State Bar of Georgia, the Alabama Associated Press and the South Carolina Press Association.

W. Jack Romberg retired as the rabbi of Temple Israel in Tallahassee, FL in the summer of 2019. It was his second career. He intended to enter rabbinic school after graduating from University of Pittsburgh in 1976 with a BA in history focusing on Germany, but his father asked him to help in the family’s furniture manufacturing business. In 1995 he decided to pursue the lifelong dream to be a rabbi, entering Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1996, earning a master’s degree in 1999 and ordained in 2001. Before retiring, Rabbi Romberg decided to write the book on his great uncle Richard Stern, perhaps forming a third career. As a rabbi, Romberg was deeply involved in the general community, interfaith programs as well as non-partisan community issues. He did frequent opening blessings at the state legislature, the governor’s cabinet meetings, and county commission meetings. He wrote many editorials for the Tallahassee Democrat, the local newspaper. In 2008, he served on the paper’s editorial board as the chosen community person. Romberg led these organizations: The Interfaith Clergy Association, The Village Square, and the Tallahassee Equality Action Ministry, and was on the board of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra for 15 years. For a special concert in 2017, that told the story of music performed by prisoners in the Theresienstadt ghetto during the Holocaust, he wrote the narrative, selected the music, and was a narrator in the concert. He was a frequent guest speaker on local TV discussion shows and a local NPR radio show. At the retirement gala celebrating his role in the city, the mayor presented him a key to the city.

Emanuel (Manu) Rosen is a bestselling author whose books have been translated into thirteen languages. He was born in Israel where he went to school, served in the army, and was an award-winning copywriter. After his graduate school education in the United States and a successful career as an executive in Silicon Valley, Emanuel turned to write. He is married to Daria Mochly-Rosen, a professor at Stanford. They live in Menlo Park, California, and have four adult children.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Elizabeth Rosenberg acquired a Masters and Doctoral degree researching the ramifications of the transmission of trauma from Holocaust survivor to their offspring. The author considers herself fortunate to have been raised by Holocaust Survivor parents who – in spite of the horrific trauma they endured – role modeled courage, optimism, faith and resilience. As such, the author derives enormous happiness amongst her beloved children and grandchildren and extended family of sisters, nieces and nephews and cousins, commitment and dedication to clients, enjoys new experiences and challenges, and her new career as author.

Joanna Rosenthall is a psychoanalyst and couple psychotherapist. For many years she worked in the NHS at the Tavistock Clinic and continues to work in private practise. Over the years she has written many short stories, 10 of which were published in anthologies and literary journals. She lives in London with Julian. Cursing the Darkness is her first novel.

Deborah grew up in Berkeley, California. Throughout her life, she has demonstrated a natural proclivity for facilitating and working with individuals and groups in diverse settings. After university, she worked as a real estate agent, obtained her broker’s license, and co-founded a real estate company with eight other women. Deborah served as president and managing broker, while obtaining her master’s degree in clinical psychology, and becoming vitally engaged as a family, child, and play therapist. She emigrated to Vancouver, Canada in 1993. Fifteen years ago, Deborah perceived a need for activities designed to provide emotional and creative support for children of Holocaust survivors like herself. She continues to co-facilitate Vancouver’s Second-Generation Group and assisted in touring the Gesher exhibit of artwork produced by the combined creative efforts of Holocaust survivors, child survivors, and the second-generation. Motivated to honour those who saved lives through acts of civil courage, Deborah co-founded the Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society (WSCCS) in Vancouver. Deborah is a mixed-media artist, with works appearing in private and public collections. Currently, she has turned her creative focus towards writing – facilitating a Second-Generation writing group, and working on a memoir. Organizing this anthology has been profoundly meaningful for her. Stepchildren and their families are a blessing in Deborah’s life. She and her husband, Henry Ross-Grayman, are active participants in Jewish meditation and members of Or Shalom. Along with their two dogs, they split their time between Vancouver and Salt Spring Island.

Ruth Rotkowitz is a second-generation child – the daughter of Holocaust survivors from Austria. This has informed much of her research and writing. She has published fiction, non-fiction, and poetry in a variety of anthologies and literary journals, and was a staff writer and member of the editorial board of the (now-defunct) Woman’s Newspaper of Princeton, winning awards for many of her feature articles. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in English and has taught English on both the college and high school levels. She currently leads book talks in the Phoenix, Arizona area, where she lives with her husband.

Miryam Sas is a professor of comparative literature, film and media at the University of California, Berkeley. As a scholar, her work centers on Japanese avant-garde arts and culture. She is notably the author of Feeling Media: Potentiality and the Afterlife of Art (Duke, 2022) as well as other books, articles, translations and stories. She lives in Berkeley with her hairless cat Felty.

Eli Schaap (b. 1954) has researched his mother Bep’s life during the Holocaust for the last five years. He is Bep’s youngest of five children. Born in The Hague, the Netherlands, he has lived in the United States for nearly 50 years. He is a Jewish identity and life researcher and the Senior Vice President of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life.

Born in Poland, Helen Schamroth arrived in Melbourne with her parents in 1949 and has lived in Auckland, New Zealand since 1968. She has written extensively for national and international publications about craft and design, including her award-winning book “100 New Zealand Craft Artists”. Her writing has evolved in parallel with her visual arts career, and she has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Triennale of Tapestry in Lodz, Poland. Working as an arts writer, arts consultant, curator and arts advocate, Helen has served on the Arts Board of Creative New Zealand and is a Life Member of the Designers’ Institute of New Zealand. In 2005 she was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the arts.

Zeev Scheinwald was born on July 4, 1921 as Wolf (meaning Zeev in Hebrew) Scheinwald in Sochaczew, Poland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he was taken prisoner and sent to various labor and concentration camps, while his entire family was exterminated by the Nazis and their collaborators. He arrived in Israel in 1946, was enlisted in the military, and later worked in construction, over time becoming a successful building contractor. He then moved with his family to Cote d’Ivoire in Africa where he headed a major construction company. Later on, he moved with his wife and children to Paris. Work brought them to many countries including Venezuela where he also led major construction projects. Zeev became a successful businessman. He and his wife Bruria helped with numerous philanthropic causes. He passed away in 2013. Ella Scheinwald is an executive and management consultant and business strategist, and principal of NYC Advisors, LCC, a Management Consultancy firm. Ella was previously USA Executive Director of Piguet International, a global credit reporting agency. She graduated from the Sorbonne University in Paris and from MIIS (Middlebury) in California with Masters Degrees and a Post Graduate Degree in Languages and Linguistics, Intercultural Communications, International Policy Studies, Translating and Interpreting. Ella grew up in Cote d’Ivoire, France and Israel. She has traveled extensively, and speaks four languages fluently. She is a classical music piano player, and loves giving piano recitals, traveling, reading, cooking and entertaining. She lives in New York, is married and has two children.

Agnes Schipper is the daughter of a hidden child and a member of the Dutch Resistance who helped save her mother from the Holocaust. Born in New York City, Agnes was raised as a Catholic, the faith of her parents, and first learned about her mother’s hidden Jewish ancestry when she was 20. Agnes had a career as a newspaper reporter and editor and later as an attorney. Retirement allowed her the time to research and write about her parents’ remarkable story. The mother of four and grandmother of five, Agnes lives in Sarasota, Florida.

Jonathan Schloss is the proud grandson of Sam and Fay Schloss and Jack and Sally Wimmer. He is profoundly grateful as a “3rd Gen” member that most of his children knew and remember all of his grandparents. Jonathan is the managing attorney of Schloss and Schloss PC, a law firm he runs with father, Jack Schloss. He lives in New Jersey with his wife Devorah (Lahasky) and is the proud father of Miriam, Eli & Devorah (Burg), Yehoshua and Ori, and the proud grandfather of Ahuva Faiga.

Leokadia Schmidt (née Knobelman, 1914–1984) was born in Warsaw, where she and her husband, Józef Bergman Schmidt, owned a successful shoe manufacturing business before WWII. During the Holocaust, the family survived the Warsaw Ghetto, escaped deportation to Treblinka, and lived in hiding on the "Aryan side" of Warsaw under assumed identities. While in hiding, Leokadia wrote an eyewitness account of the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and her family’s struggle to survive. Her manuscript was buried during the Warsaw Uprising and miraculously recovered after the war. After the war, the Schmidts emigrated, first to France, then Venezuela, and finally settled in Phoenix, Arizona. Leokadia was the only member of her immediate family to survive the Holocaust. Her memoir, Rescued from the Ashes, preserves her testimony for future generations.

Oren Schneider was born in Israel, a third generation to Holocaust survivors and seventh generation to farmers from the Galilee. He is an entrepreneur who enjoys music, cooking, travel, people and especially the combination of all four. He lives with his family in Brooklyn.

Joseph Schupack was a Holocaust survivor (1922 – 1989) from Radzyn-Podlaski, a small town in Poland. His entire immediate family perished in the Second World war. In 1981 he decided to write his memoirs, The Dead Years. His unusually detailed recollection of names and dates makes compelling reading. Joseph Schupack passed away at the age of 67, leaving a wife and two sons.

Milton Schwartz is a writer with a forthcoming title. A forthcoming title will join the Amsterdam Publishers list.

Daniel Seymour is a tenured professor, administrator and consultant to many colleges and universities. He received his B.A. degree from Gettysburg College and his M.B.A and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Oregon. Dr. Seymour is the author of 18 books and lives in Palm Springs, California with his wife, Rhonda.

Suzette Sheft (2006) attended the Horace Mann School in New York City. She now is a student, and used to live in Manhattan with her mother, twin brother, and two dogs. In her free time, she enjoys writing, reading, running, and spending time with family and friends. She began writing Running for Shelter at age 13 and earned a Silver Key from Scholastic for an excerpt of the book. Suzette hopes that her novel inspires other children to record important stories from their own family legacies.

Tami Shem-Tov, born in Israel in 1969, is a prize-winning writer for children and young adults. For 20 years she worked as a journalist. Now she is concentrating in writing books, teaching in Haifa University and holding meetings with children all over the country. She likes writing biographies, stories based on true events and historical novel. Her books won the Andersen Honor Citation (2014), the Bialik Prize (2014), the Israeli Public Libraries Award (2014), the Lea Goldberg Prize (2013), the DafDaf Prize (2012), the prime minister’s Prize (2011), the German Children’s Literature Award (2010), the Yad Vashem Prize (2007), and Ze’ev Prize (1999, 2008). She lives with her two daughters in Tel-Aviv.

A former social worker and teacher, Jordan Steven Sher’s work reflects the core values developed in those professions, but also those that underscore his desire to depict the challenges that humanity continues to face, and has yet to reconcile. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Pina. They have two adult children who continue to pursue their life’s journeys in their own wonderful ways.

Fifty years as a curious daughter helped fuel her quest to unearth a past her father kept hidden. Tenacity and a refusal to accept his determination to keep her out sustained her pursuit but above all her need to know his past was driven by her need to know who she was, her identity. The urge to write perhaps stems from her Irish roots. Her curiosity about people, their backgrounds and how these shape them was nurtured by 40 years of living and working in one of the most diverse cities in the world – Toronto, Canada. Short stints in Zambia and El Salvador sharpened her perceptions. More recently, eleven years living in rural Ontario provided the time to think and write. Her ten-year journey into her father’s pain-filled past extracted a heavy toll on both of them, worth it in the end by the knowledge and love that deepened between them. The award-winning Dancing with my Father is their story. The author and her husband now live in Canada’s capital, Ottawa.

Pauline Steinhorn delights in telling other people’s stories. Throughout her career as an award-winning filmmaker and writer, she’s written and directed films about scientists, artists, Supreme Court Justices, nurses, clowns, Native American dancers and more. Her documentaries have aired on PBS, Maryland Public Television, Sesame Street and Discovery Channel. She’s produced short films for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Smithsonian and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her essays have been published in The Wall Street Journal and Moment magazine. Pauline speaks about her family’s Holocaust experiences during Yom HaShoah commemorations and in middle and high school classrooms through the JCRC, Jewish Community Relations Council. She lives with her husband, Bill Creed, in Chevy Chase, MD, near their two adult children, Colin Oppenheimer and Katherine Creed. When she’s not writing or directing, Pauline can be found hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains, kayaking off Chincoteague Island, or catching frogs with her young grandchildren.

Halina Goldberg Kleiner was born in Czestochowa, Poland in 1929. Her father owned a lumberyard in the city until the Nazis seized it from him after invading Poland in 1939. That began her horrifying story of survival. She was one of the few who survived the infamous Volary Death March. Halina met her husband-to-be, Leon Kleiner, after the war in a Displaced Persons Camp in Salzburg, Austria. They spent most of the next year together getting to know one another and hoping that someday they could marry. Halina was one of the very first Jews to be allowed to immigrate to the United States, and in the summer of 1946, she settled in Buffalo, New York. There she astounded her teachers by completing high school in only two years even though she could not speak a word of English when she arrived. She and Leon reunited in the United States in 1948 after Leon got his chance to immigrate to New York. They married in October of 1949 and started their very successful life together. They had three children who gave them five grandchildren. And now they have two great grandchildren. Sadly, Halina died on April 9, 2022, shortly before her story could be published. She was 93 years old. Edwin Stepp has more than thirty years experience in media, marketing and advertising. He was executive editor for the quarterly, Vision—Journal for a New World, for over 15 years. The magazine had a modest circulation but was distributed in over 75 countries worldwide. He wrote dozens of articles about history, culture, environment and current events for the publication. The magazine had a companion Website that had over 250,000 visitors per month. Edwin lead the development of the Website and also a mobile app for additional distribution of the content. In that position he also helped write and edit several books about Jewish and Christian history published by the journal. In 2011, Edwin founded Django Productions, a television and film production company that focuses on documentaries and nonfiction entertainment. Edwin continues to hone his writing talents as he develops these films and their scripts.

Leon Kleiner (1928–2025) was a retired commercial and residential real estate developer from New Jersey. Born in Tarnopol, Poland, just over a decade before the outbreak of the Second World War, he miraculously survived the Holocaust. After the war, he immigrated to the United States in 1947 and married Halina, also a Holocaust survivor, whom he had met in a displaced persons camp in Austria in 1945. Leon and his brother built a successful real estate business in New Jersey, where Leon lived with his family for many years. He and Halina were the proud parents of two daughters and five grandchildren, and later welcomed a great-grandson. Their son tragically died of cancer in his early twenties. Leon died in 2025. Edwin Stepp has more than thirty years experience in media, marketing and advertising. He was executive editor for the quarterly, Vision—Journal for a New World, for over 15 years. The magazine had a modest circulation but was distributed in over 75 countries worldwide. He wrote dozens of articles about history, culture, environment and current events for the publication. The magazine had a companion Website that had over 250,000 visitors per month. Edwin lead the development of the Website and also a mobile app for additional distribution of the content. In that position he also helped write and edit several books about Jewish and Christian history published by the journal. In 2011, Edwin founded Django Productions, a television and film production company that focuses on documentaries and nonfiction entertainment. Edwin continues to hone his writing talents as he develops these films and their scripts.

Elaine Stock pens fiction of courageous women because life is full of challenges, and we must bravely step forward. While her novels continue to appear on several Amazon Bestseller Lists, what pleases her the most is hearing from readers who say these stories inspire them to face their own tomorrows. Elaine and her husband are owned by two cats, who sometimes allow them to go on long walks down country roads and explore New England towns.

Dr. Charles Kaner has devoted his career to providing high quality dental care in Midtown Manhattan. Dr. Kaner is a Diplomate of the American Board of Periodontology, which is a recognized specialty of the American Dental Association, one of the highest recognitions of achievement afforded by the specialty. Dr. Kaner graduated from Temple University Dental School after obtaining a B.S degree at Brooklyn College. Thereafter, he completed his graduate training at New York University Dental School. He currently is an Assistant Clinical Professor at Mount Sinai Hospital, an Assistant Clinical Professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and has been the Chief of the Periodontal Department at Mount Sinai Hospital since 1990. In addition to his private practice and hospital commitments, he lectures both nationally and internationally on periodontics and implant surgery. Dr. Kaner’s mother Ray Kaner has handled the front office for nearly 40 years and knows his patients well. Dr. Kaner has accompanied his mother on hundreds of talks about her experience in the Łódź Ghetto, and is actively involved with the Board of Directors at the Museum of History in Battery Park. Journalist, editor, and publisher Joy E. Stocke works at the intersection of culture, history, and memory. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin – Madison with a B.S. in Journalism, she has spent more than 30 years collaborating with Holocaust survivors and their descendants – editing, shaping, and helping bring to life stories of individuals and families who emerged from profound loss into witness and renewal. As founder of Tree of Life Consulting & Publishing, Stocke mentors writers at every stage of development, guiding manuscripts from initial concept through editing, design, and publication. Her work is rooted in a deep belief that language, image, and story are essential tools for connection across difference. Stocke’s own writing explores travel, food, and cultural history. Her memoir Anatolian Days & Nights (co-authored with Angie Brenner) chronicles more than a decade of travel throughout Turkey, while her cookbook Tree of Life: Turkish Home Cooking delves into the layered culinary traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean and reflects her lifelong interest in how food, place, and identity shape one another.

Roger Swindells was born and brought up in Grimsby in the north of England. He transferred to Ipswich in East Anglia with his job as an officer of H.M Customs and Excise, retiring after 37 years service. A frequent visitor to Amsterdam since 1978 he was married to Lyn a retired nurse. They have a son Matthew and two grand-daughters. His first book, Mendelevski’s Box, won the bronze medal in the Readers Favorite Award 2020 contest in the genre historical fiction.

David is a writer, editor, and performing artist, based in New York City. His memoir, American Misfit, was released in 2017. He is the co-author of several books about cancer, including Rx for Hope, Reimagining Women’s Cancers and Reimagining Men’s Cancers, The Cancer Book: 101 Stories of Courage, Support and Love and the author of Write for Life: Communicating Your Way Through Cancer. He coauthored The Intelligent Divorce, The Wright Choice: Your Family’s Guide to Healthy Eating, Modern Fitness and Saving Money, and was consulting editor for Marlo Thomas and her New York Times bestseller The Right Words at the Right Time, Volume 2: Your Turn. David has performed as an actor, clown and juggler, at Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, the Beacon Theatre and throughout the United States and Europe, most notably at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where THE STAGE wrote, “He is a supremely skillful performer and fine actor, reaching levels no other comics have matched at this Fringe.”

Bela Ruth Samuel was born in the Netherlands less than one year after WWII. Her parents and older sisters were Shoah survivors. She lives in Israel and is the mother of a large family, including children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. After many years as a professor of English literature, she is retired and has turned to writing. This is her third book.

Co-author together with his brother David Twain of The Precious Few. Co-author together with his brother Art Twain of The Precious Few

Ron Vincent was born and brought up in South Wales by a German mother and English father. After completing his secondary school education in Wales, he moved to Nottingham after gaining a place at university. In 1977, he graduated with honours in German and Philosophy and embarked on a career in sales and business consulting that was to last for almost 30 years. From an early age, Ron was fascinated with his German/Jewish background and gradually became more and more curious about what his mother and her family had experienced during the Holocaust and in the years following the Second World War. In 2007, he settled permanently in Germany and, having decided to move out of the commercial sector, returned to his first love of teaching and is still actively working in this area, although he is now semi-retired. In 2019, he became a German citizen. Always passionate about writing and the English language, he succeeded in getting some of his poetry published whilst still a teenager. In addition to poetry, he has also written a number of short stories and, over the years, has contributed numerous articles to both local and national newspapers. In addition to his passion for writing, Ron is an accomplished pianist who has enjoyed a lifelong love-affair with all kinds of music and, for many years, played publicly in restaurants and at social and business functions. He has never lost interest in philosophy, still reads extensively and is particularly interested in the themes of personal identity, ethics and the connection between social behaviour and spirituality. He is married and has a grown-up son and daughter, both of whom live in the UK.

The son of Holocaust survivors and grandson of Holocaust victims, Kenneth D. Wald served six years as director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida. He spent four years on the state of Florida’s Task Force on Holocaust Education and co-founded and directed the Summer Holocaust Institute for Florida Teachers. In 2011, he was named the University of Florida Teacher-Scholar of the Year, the highest honor given to a faculty member. His most recent book, The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism, won the 2020  National Jewish Book Award.

Iboja Wandall-Holm is a Danish writer and translator born in 1921 in Czechoslovakia, one of the few democracies arising after World War I from the dissolution of the three European empires: Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary. In 1942, she fled with her younger sister Lila to Hungary to escape deportation to the Nazi death camps. She was caught, but then survived Auschwitz, Birkenau and Ravensbrück. After the war she studied Political Economics in Prague and worked for Czechoslovak Radio there. In 1947 she married a Dane and became a Danish citizen. In 1956 she moved to Copenhagen, where she still lives. As the wife of a United Nations ambassador, she has also lived in Africa, Iran, the USA and Austria. She writes in both Danish and Slovak. In the early 1960s she began publishing poems, short stories, essays and translations from Czech and Slovak literature. Her first collection of verse, Digte, came out in 1965, to be followed by more collections. She joined the Union of Danish Writers and collaborated with Danish Radio. She has also written children’s books and collections of songs, translated Slovak fairy tales, as well as Slovak, Czech, Polish, German and Hungarian prose fiction and poetry. In addition, she has written a series of lectures, chronicles and other productions for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. In 1991 she published her Holocaust memoir, Morbærtræet [The Mulberry Tree] in Danish. It went into a second, expanded edition in 2000 under the title Farvel til århundredet [Farewell to the Century]. In 2003, it was published in her own Slovak translation in Bratislava under the title Zbohom, storočie [Farewell, Century], reprinted in 2016 and 2021 under the original title Moruša. In recognition of her work, Iboja Wandall-Holm is listed in the Blue Book, an encyclopaedia of people who have significantly enhanced the Kingdom of Denmark.

Charles S. Weinblatt, who retired in 2004 at the age of 51 from a rewarding career as a university administrator because of a spinal disability, is a prolific book reviewer for The New York Journal of Books, the author of several books, and a former contributing journalist for The Examiner. Weinblatt’s biography appears in the Marquis Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in American Education. In January 2021, Weinblatt was selected by the Marquis Board to receive the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. Weinblatt joined the University of Toledo in 1987 as Director of Computer Learning Centers. He became a program manager in the Human Resource Development Center and a Program Coordinator in the Division of Continuing Education. Weinblatt created the Division of Organization Development in 1995, providing management consulting, customized training, and organizational and employee assessments. He served as director until his retirement. Under his leadership, this division improved the performance of dozens of organizations throughout the United States and Canada while generating significant revenue for the University of Toledo. Earlier in his career, Weinblatt counseled in psychotherapy, education, training, and vocational rehabilitation, serving thousands of individuals. He also managed a private employment consulting career for 20 years, providing job seeking skills training and counseling for many organizations and innumerable individuals. Weinblatt has been a frequent television news guest as an expert on economic, management, and labor force issues, appearing more than 40 times on Toledo television news stations. The rich diversity of his career enables Weinblatt to produce books and novels that draw upon a wide range of sources and contain unforgettable, well-developed characters. Weinblatt continues to write novels, short stories, and articles in retirement. He lives with his wife in Ohio.

Henry Weinreich, known professionally as Henry Roth, is a go-to lifestyle and fashion authority, fashion designer, author, and recognised "Makeover King." Born in Sydney in 1960 to Holocaust survivors Aneta and Joseph Weinreich, he is part of the first generation of Australians born after the Holocaust. Henry's career has seen him appear on the award-winning Project Runway Australia, Beauty and the Geek, Australia's Biggest Loser, The Real Housewives of Melbourne, Red Carpet from Hollywood, and as Fashion Editor on The Today Show Australia. Henry and his gowns have been featured on some of the highest-rated television programs globally, including Good Morning America, Entertainment Tonight, The View with Barbara Walters, Fashion Police with Joan Rivers, E! Network's 101 Starlicious, and Live! On the Red Carpet. In 2019, following his father Joseph "Reggie" Weinreich's life-threatening stroke, Henry decided to return from Melbourne, where he was living, to sit down with his father and discover the stories of his life. It was while Henry was writing his father's memoir that he started questioning his own place in his father's extraordinary stories. Born to Be His Son is Henry's second book and first memoir, an intergenerational story exploring legacy, purpose, identity, resilience, and the enduring impact of the Holocaust across generations. His first book, Your Day, Your Way: The Essential Handbook for the 21st Century Bride, was published by Penguin and became a trusted guide for modern brides. Henry credits his ambition, drive, determination, and spirit to his remarkable parents, Aneta and Joseph Weinreich.

Zvi Wiesenfeld studied Political Science at Yeshiva University and Forensic Accounting at John Jay College. He works as a financial investigator and business writer in New York. He wrote this book to honor the memory of his grandfather, Holocaust survivor Jacob Wiesenfeld. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Sara.

Peter Wiesner was born in South Croydon, England, spent his childhood in both East and West Berlin, and immigrated to the US in 1954, settling in Santa Monica, California. In 1967, he received a degree in History from the University of California at Berkeley and earned a master’s in communication from the University of Pennsylvania. After earning a doctorate in education from Rutgers University, with a focus on distance education and instructional design, he worked for several educational institutions from 1974 to 1984, and then spent five years at Rutgers University as a television producer. From 1989 to 2013, he was an educator at IEEE, an international professional association for electrical and computer engineers, where he directed publications and educational programs for member outreach and continuing education, including software, educational standards, courseware and video programs for engineers and the general public. His lifetime interest in films led him to produce numerous television documentaries on social, technological as well as environmental issues pertaining to green engineering and sustainability on a global scale. After retirement, he wrote his debut novel, Xtremus (Montag Press, 2015), a dystopian sci-fi satire about the demise of high technology resulting from technological overreach, and subsequently focused on writing about his mother’s struggles as a Holocaust refugee and other topics related to the Holocaust. In addition to his lifetime pursuits in literature and the visual arts, he is involved in educational activities and outreach that promote racial tolerance and social equity. Since 1980, he and his wife, Linda, have lived in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They have two married sons and five grandchildren.

Her birth in a D.P. camp in Germany marked Ettie Zilber with a special responsibility.  Retirement from a career as an educator in international schools  in six countries has given her the opportunity to fulfill that responsibility – to research and document her family’s Holocaust experiences – and reflect on their impact on the next generation. The author of Third Culture Kids: Children of International School Educators, and numerous professional publications, conducts workshops on cross-cultural sensitivity, international-mindedness, tolerance and global citizenship for youth and adults. She lives in Arizona with her husband, and enjoys visits with her children and grandchildren.