Preserving the Memories of Holocaust Survivors

“I promise to keep your memory and tell your story.”

One by one, eight storytellers stand in front of a Holocaust survivor in the library of Holocaust Museum LA in Los Angeles, CA and make this promise. These young adults, ranging in age from 19 to 22, have spent the last six weeks getting to know the survivors and learning to tell their stories – becoming keepers of their memories. The survivors have just heard their stories for the first time.

The storytellers might seem an unlikely group to be learning to tell Holocaust stories. They are students from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, AR and the University of Central Arkansas in Little Rock, AR. None are Jewish, and only one has a background in Holocaust history. Nonetheless, when the opportunity arose, they embraced it, understanding they were making a life-long commitment.

“Being a part of [this] program changed my life,” says Riley Farco, who learned to tell the story of Holocaust survivor Lya Frank. “Sharing Lya’s story is such a privilege and an honor, and I could not be more thankful to be able to do so. Being a voice for my dear friend’s memory is something I will cherish forever. Every survivor’s story deserves to be told, and [this program] gives life to this goal.”

Who Will Tell My Story?

In June 2024, my colleague Lynne Feldman and I heard a talk by a representative from the Claims Conference, the organization that distributes reparation money from the German government to Holocaust survivors.

“Ten years ago, survivors asked: How can I get home healthcare?” he said. “Now they also ask: Who will tell my story?”

When we heard this, we realized we had an answer. We could create direct connections between the next generation of storytellers and living survivors. We knew it was a race against time – 80 years after the end of the Holocaust, few survivors are left to even ask the question.

We began to approach survivors. Would they be interested? The answer was unequivocally yes.

For our first cohort, we partnered with Holocaust Museum LA, facilitated by Teach the Shoah storyteller Zuzana Reimer Landres, a longtime museum docent. Most of the participating survivors are Holocaust Museum LA volunteers.

“When we were approached, we jumped at the opportunity to say yes,” Fanny Wolfowitz, Education Project Manager at Holocaust Museum LA, told us, “because we found a shared commitment to ensuring that the history of the Holocaust and its enduring lessons resonate across generations.”

Keepers of Memory

When one of our storytellers connected us to Emily Hand, a graduate student in Holocaust history at the University of Arkansas, we recognized we had an unusual opportunity. We had the chance to create a cohort of storytellers from Arkansas, a place where few survivors are left. Not only could we pass the survivors’ memories to a new generation of tellers, but we could also bring those memories to a place where few people have the chance to hear Holocaust stories from a living speaker.

Emily presented the idea to history, education, and journalism classes at two nearby universities. Eight students, six undergraduates and two graduate students, Emily included, were accepted into the program. They signed an agreement promising to become “keepers and tellers of memory” – to tell the stories they were about to learn for as long as they were able.

They were each matched with a single survivor. With eight students and seven survivors, one survivor, Eva Brettler, worked with two students.

The students spent five weeks meeting online twice a week. Under the guidance of Steve Salzberg and Genie Glucksman, both trained by the Shoah Foundation in interviewing Holocaust survivors, the students conducted three interviews with their matched survivor, focusing on the survivor’s pre-war, wartime, and post-war experiences, respectively. During this period, the students began to develop deep relationships with the survivors.

At the same time, they worked with us to learn to understand the Jewish and historical contexts of what they were hearing and to retell those memories in their own words. The goal was to craft a factual and compelling story of one survivor’s Holocaust experience.

At the end of the online training, we gathered in LA for an intensive week-long “bootcamp” to complete the stories and to meet the survivors in person. Meeting in person cemented the close personal ties between the survivors and the students. For the students, telling the survivor’s story became more than a contract; it became a commitment.

Share Our Story

Before they returned home, the students presented their stories to the survivors and their community at Holocaust Museum LA. They promised to carry on each survivor’s memory and to continue to tell their story.

It was a beautiful, moving moment. After listening to storyteller Riley Farco tell her story, survivor Lya Frank said, “It was totally different from how I present my own story. Very, very insightful. I’m almost emotional, and I’m not an emotional person.”

“This is all we ask,” Lya told Riley. “Share, share our story.”

In the months since returning home, these eight young storytellers have brought the survivors’ stories to hundreds of people across Arkansas. Audiences of all backgrounds, people who might otherwise never have had the chance to hear such a story in person, have been moved by these storytellers and the important stories they tell.

This project is ongoing: we are currently gathering a second group of LA-based Holocaust survivors and a second cohort of students to become keepers and tellers of their memories.