The Next Chapter enables high school youth to develop profound connections to the Holocaust. By participating in the program, students are awarded 40 hours of community service and create a special relationship with a local survivor.

At monthly meetings, students will learn how to:

• Interview Holocaust survivors and document their oral histories in a written essay.
• Study the history of the Holocaust and explore the current Jewish cultural renaissance in Poland.
• Time commitment: Students will meet in one seminar a month from December through April, and connect with the survivor they have been matched with three times throughout the semester.

Applications are due November 1, 2012.

The project is a partnership of JFCS and  the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture and its Jewish Heritage Initiative in Poland. Some of the research was gathered from the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland and from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center.

Survivor Stories

You can access the essays written in 2011 by clicking on the names of the survivors listed here. The research on the towns and countries of their birthplaces is also linked.

Survivor Irma Broclawski
Essay by Amber Pearson
Wisnicz (Krakow) (pdf), Poland (pdf)

Survivor Morris Eskenazi
Essay by Nicolas Held
Salonica (pdf), Greece (pdf)

Survivor Lenci Farkas
Essay by Hannah Olsen
Kralovo Nad tisou (pdf), Czechoslovakia (pdf)

Survivor Abram Geldman
Essay by William Danforth
Lublin (pdf), Poland (pdf)

Survivor George Heller
Essay by Avie Sanchez
Budapest (pdf), Hungary (pdf)

Survivor Herbert Heller
Essay by James Benner
Teplice-Sanov, Czechoslovakia (pdf)

Survivor Warren Hirsch
Essay by Zoe Lyon
Mannheim (pdf), Germany (pdf)

Survivor Wilfred “Bill” Kay
Essay by Natasha Tabachnikoff
Pultusk (pdf), Poland (pdf)

Survivor Denise Kopecky
Essay by Josh Temes
Nemecka Lupca (pdf), Slovakia (pdf)

Survivor Hedy Krasnobrod
Essay by Ayani Hayashi
Vienna (pdf), Austria (pdf)

Survivor Ed Lichtman
Essay by Sophia Koperweis
Dobromil (pdf), Poland (pdf)

Survivor William Lowenberg
Essay by Katrina Allick
Ochtrup (pdf), Germany (pdf)

Survivor Gloria Hollander Lyon
Essay by Emma Brenner-Bryant
Berehovo (pdf), Czechoslovakia (Transcarpathian Ukraine (pdf) / Hungary (pdf))

Survivor Isaac Nittenberg
Essay by Maya Argaman
Lodz (pdf), Poland (pdf)

Survivor Bill Rooz
Essay by Ian Glazman
Berehovo (pdf), Transcarpathian Ukraine (pdf) / Hungary (pdf)

Survivor Beatrice Sarkany
Essay by Bridget Blum
Sibiu (pdf), Romania (pdf)

Survivor Lori Shearn
Essay by Eva Geisse
Vienna (pdf), Austria (pdf)

Survivor Ben Stern
Essay by Yael Levin
Mogenize (Warsaw) (pdf), Poland (pdf)

Survivor Ann Marie Yellin
Essay by Ellenor Harkin
Chemnitz (pdf), Germany (pdf)

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