Telling Our Stories, Shaping Our Future

As a journalist and content creator, I’ve always believed in the transformative power of storytelling. Stories aren’t just words—they’re bridges. They connect us across oceans, across time, across identities. They carry the weight of our past and the hope for our future.

For those of us dedicated to fighting hate and preserving memory, storytelling is more than a craft. It’s a calling.

I carry one story with me wherever I go—that of my grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. Her voice, cracked by trauma but fortified by resilience, echoes in my heart each time I speak. I’ve shared her testimony in classrooms, synagogues, and while walking the silent tracks of Auschwitz on March of the Living. Again and again, I’ve watched her words pierce through apathy, indifference—even ignorance. Stories like hers do what statistics and headlines can’t: they humanize history.

That’s why I’m profoundly moved by a groundbreaking initiative launched last week at the AJC Global Forum—a partnership between the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the USC Shoah Foundation. Together, they’re undertaking a visionary mission: to document and elevate contemporary antisemitism through the raw, unfiltered voices of those who have lived it.

We are, undeniably, at a tipping point.

From university campuses in America to the streets of Paris and Buenos Aires, antisemitism has resurged in insidious and violent ways. The events of October 7 didn’t just mark a day of horror—they shattered illusions of safety for Jews worldwide.

But if history teaches us anything, it’s this: personal testimony changes minds. It softens hearts. It sparks action.

This project aims to collect 10,000 firsthand accounts from Jews across the globe who have faced antisemitism since 1945. Not just an archive, this will be a living repository of truth—an emotional, urgent counterweight to the rising tide of hate and denial.

AJC brings decades of international advocacy. The Shoah Foundation brings world-class expertise in testimony preservation. Together, they are building the largest digital archive of contemporary antisemitism ever assembled.

And they’re starting with powerful, deeply human stories:

• Daniel Pomerantz, who survived the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people in a Hezbollah-orchestrated attack.

• Susan Stern, whose run for local office in Connecticut triggered such an intense antisemitic campaign that her family was forced to leave their home.

• Antoine Haguenauer, who was assaulted in Paris simply for attending a memorial for the victims of October 7. The police told him his case wasn’t worth pursuing.

These are not isolated incidents. These are the lived realities of Jews today—from the Mizrahi teen in Jerusalem facing slurs, to the post-Soviet Jew in Berlin hiding their identity, to the Ethiopian-Israeli child bullied for how they pray.

This archive will preserve them all.

At a time when facts are distorted and hate is amplified by algorithms, this initiative is an act of defiance. It refuses to let Jewish suffering be forgotten. It insists that truth has value. And it declares: we are still here, and we will be heard.

So what can you do?

Amplify this effort.
Support it.
But most of all—listen.

Because stories don’t just reflect our world. They shape it.

And if we want a future without hate, it begins with remembering the past—and having the courage to speak the truth of the present.