Alexis is 36 y.o from 3GNY. She is an actress writing her own material about a one woman show on the Holocaust abut a woman who performs in a club in her final hours before she is kicked out of the club in Germany because she is Jewish. Both her parents were children of the Holocaust survivors. Her father’s family was Czech/ Hungarian. The grandmother and grandfather were in Auschwitz but his grandmother’s side survived in Hungary because false papers were made and the family dyed their hair blond as disguise. She states that her Fathers family had 5 sisters who survived Auschwitz. Three went to Australia and Two went to USA. Her parents were born in Europe-her mother in Rumania and father in Czechoslovakia. She has a picture of grandfather’s parents at their marriage. The parents were raised in a Holocaust survivor community in Australia. She states that that is most of the Jewish population in Australia. She went to parochial school there. She met her husband after moving to the USA. He is 2nd generation of the Holocaust. He is an entrepreneur in the technology business. She has three stepsons age 17,14,12 y.o. who go to Yeshiva. She helps 3GNY in its administration.
Jacob is 21 yo and is third generation of Holocaust. Both grandparents were survivors from Aushwitz. Jacob did not know his grandfather, Tomi Gyory but he knew his father Michael’s mother, Zsuzsi. His father has written the story of his heritage and their family who came from Hungary. He remembers his grandmother fondly because at her bedside were the photos of the eight grandchildren that she honored in her prayers every night Jacob’s father is passionate about teaching the story of the Holocaust to the school district they live in. Jacob’s parents are divorced. His father is Jewish and his mother is Presbyterian and Jacob was raised Presbyterian but he did go to Israel as part of the Birthright He felt isolated from the others. However, he grew up in a heavily populated Jewish community and had been to many Bar Mitzvah celebrations. His comment of increasing Antisemitism is as time goes by we see the Jews as different and forget the story of the Holocaust since it is in far past. His father’s statement in his writings about the history of the final solution and the statistic of focusing on the six million killed. He states: “They were regular people with normal everyday lives. No lesser expert in mass killing, Josef Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union whose regime killed tens of millions of his own people, said: "A single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”
Cayle is 41 yo and a member of 3GNY and very proud to be an educator in all of the New York Schools. She is proud to be living in the upper West side of NY where many educated Jews are her neighbors. Both grandparents were in concentration camps- one was Terezin, the other Auschwitz. Her grandfather was beaten many times and refused being a Kapo. He survived as a tailor in Canada and Cayle’s family was raised in Toronto. Her mother was a PhD in Economics. They lived in an antisemitic neighborhood and grandparents raised her since her parents were busy after school. Cayle became a comedian and she early on did acting and was in many television ads. She does not perform now but is happy to be onstage teaching the Holocaust. She is an educational consultant since her brother had a learning deficit and her own children also have the problem. She has a 19 yo in college and a 10 yo and 16 y.o at home. She has also been trained as a volunteer for Security Force.
Lauren Engelman Lauren is 32 yo and a member of 3GNY, an organization to educate the public on the Holocaust. In NY state it is mandated that there should be Holocaust education in the schools. She is third generation of Hungarian descendant her grandmother was in Auschwitz. Lauren is of a mixed marriage with an interfaith wedding and she has given her living grandmother her first great grandchild. Her grandmother is loving and “full of life”. She has written a book ”And the Month was May” described-“A personal epic of scope and sincerity, And The Month Was May traces the life of Lillian Berliner, from her childhood in Hungary, to the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen, to her eventual liberation and resettlement in New York. Rendering with equal candor the searing cruelty of the camps, and the flourishing of life thereafter, Berliner has produced a memoir that embraces hope even as it looks unflinchingly at horror. Central to the telling is Berliner's voice, springing from the page to evoke the characters, settings, and inner motivations of her life in stunning detail. It is a story that affirms the resilience and infinite potential of the human spirit. With this history Lauren is passionate in her life to continue the education further to others. She herself works at home mostly considered as an “inclusion leader” making sure that all underprivileged are included in obtaining jobs.
David Wachs is 36 y.o and single. He is president of 3GNY. His father’s parents were both survivors of the Holocaust. His grandfather was born in Poland and kept from front line in Russian Army and grandmother escaped from Poland and survived in Siberia. She was released and found out her sister survived the labor camps and she walked across to find her back in Poland. Both grandparents met in Paris married then went onto Israel and David’s father was born in Israel. The family finally migrated to USA. David’s mother was born in USA from a family that escaped the pogroms of the turn of 20th century. His father is a professor of Chemical engineering at Lehigh University. David states his grandfather never talked of the Holocaust to his father. He did not want him to know. David has sought the history and is passionate for others to know the history. He returned to Israel on Birthright and subsequently has done archaeological digs. He is interested in making trips of Jewish history in our country with a company “Wandering Jews”. He has done walking tours in Lower Eastside and tours of Jewish history about NYC. He is a technology expert for Hedge funds. He is a joint citizen of Israel and USA and recently conducted a trip for his lawyer sister and her friend to unknown place of interest in Israel.
Dan is 38 yo 3rd generation of Holocaust. His surviving grandmother, Frieda, who is deceased was raised Catholic in Poland at age 12 to escape the camps. Upon liberation she met her husband and he being clever escaping through entrepreneurial insights with the Germans. He survived on his wits. They married early living in Germany and she insisted they move onto Canada. At a dinner party I met her daughter Anne, second Generation, married to her psychiatrist husband and we bonded. She is so proud of her Blended offspring that I felt I wished to include the 4th generation in this series. Dan, a computer maven, raised in San Francisco, met his love Sephora in St. Martin and they married. She was a professional singer that converted to Judaism for Dan and they have 3 children of multirace, Liyora and Amalya 10 yo Twins and Tziyon 7 yo. Dan, Sephora and his children remember fondly Frieda and are passionate about living and breathing their heritage. Sephora is devoted to her family who are devoutly Jewish. The children go to a parochial Jewish school and have melded into their Jewish community with pride. The children are proud to be Jewish and remember Frieda with love.
LIYORA, AMALYA, TZIYON, and DAN MARMAR Dan is 38 years old 3 rd generation of Holocaust. His surviving grandmother, Frieda, who is deceased was raised Catholic in Poland at age 12 to escape the camps. Upon liberation she met her husband and he being clever escaping through entrepreneurial insights with the Germans. He survived on his wits. They married early living in Germany and she insisted they move onto Canada. At a dinner party I met her daughter Anne, second Generation, married to her psychiatrist husband and we bonded. She is so proud of her Blended offspring that I felt I wished to include the 4 th generation in this series. Dan, a computer maven, raised in San Francisco, met his love Sephora in St. Martin and they married. She was a professional singer that converted to Judaism for Dan and they have 3 children of multiracial, Liyora and Amalya 10 years old Twins and Tziyon is 7. Dan, Sephora and his children remember fondly Frieda and are passionate about living and breathing their heritage. Sephora is devoted to her family who are devoutly Jewish. The children go to a parochial Jewish school and have melded into their Jewish community with pride. The children are proud to be Jewish and remember Frieda with love.
Riley is 12 yo. Sloan is 8 y.o and are Forth Generation of the Holocaust. They are very close to their grandmother Paula who is passionate working for The Second-Generation group in Florida called Next Generation. Both children go to public school near South street Seaport where they live in NY City. Riley is planning for a Bas Mitzvah next year. She visited the “Aushwitz” exhibit at The Jewish Heritage Museum of NYC in the lower Battery of NYC. She says “I knew that they died but I did not know how brutal!” At school she has felt a subliminal feeling of bigotry from some of her classmates who are not Jewish. One of the children is ½ Jewish. She and her sister go to Jewish camp and experience Sabbath dinner. Sloan is just learning who she is from her grandmother and she was named after her dead aunt Esther. She understands how lucky she is to have food, water, clothing and a home and loved ones.
Corey is 46 y.o, the daughter of 2nd Generation Paula Stevens, whom I painted several years ago in my series Second Generation of the Holocaust. She grew up in Cleveland and did not understand the history until it was revealed in High School with the Holocaust education. Her mother’s family died in the Holocaust and her grandmother was a survivor but she could not tell much of her history. She remembers the number on her Grandfather’s arm, but he did not talk about it. She was told to be strong as the survivors and not angry. Paula was divorced and worked. Her father had retired and was the caregiver to Corey and her siblings, a brother and sister. Corey now works in NYC for United Healthcare managing employees benefits and accounts. Her husband is from an Orthodox upbringing whose family escaped Poland before the War. Corey and her husband do not practice Orthodox religion. She and her sister accompanied their mother Paula to Poland experiencing Auschwitz and felt a sense of undermining return of Antisemitism on that trip. Some of the guides were not knowledgeable of the Holocaust from their Communist upbringing.
I met Suzanne from the Shoah Foundation. She owns a very successful Real Estate Company in NYC. She was married to a successful Family Physician whose practice was on Wall Street and he died of a Brain Tumor and she has been a widow when her children Jennifer and Jake were 12 and 9. She is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Her mother was interviewed by Shoah. One year ago, after her mother died, she went to an event in Beverly Hills and found out that her mother had been recorded and the Shoah showed her the tape whereupon she saw both the children and her husband were all present. Much of that history she did not know Her mother left the ghetto and was kept by a Christian family hiding in floorboards. Her mother was married to an officer of the Leningrad Russian Brigade, a Jew. They met after the war and married and it was not a happy marriage. The history of the Holocaust was kept silent. The marriage dissolved. Her mother was a clever businesswoman in insurance and real estate raising the family of four children. Her father was in the Black Market. After Suzanne heard the Shoah tape, she has been passionate to learn the heritage of Judaism. She honors her mother for the ability to have such intelligent survival skills which she feels she has inherited.
JENNIFER MILLER Jennifer is 28 and as she was raised, she always thought she would be a doctor like her father but she did not like premed education at Franklin and Marshall and went onto biopsychology ending at Harvard in Neuropsychology and now works at Einstein Medical College which is where I had my medical career. Her grandmother promoted for her her own truth. She feels that the Jews are not inclusive of others which leads to lack of knowledge of others and so tends to be exclusive in their thinking. Her grandmother was secular but wanted to “Keep Jewish”. JAKE MILLER Jake is 25 and grew up in Brooklyn. He went to Tulane graduating 2 years ago and in a very short time he has become very successful in Real Estate and not by his mother’s connections. On his first employment he was fired and he turned this around. The Chairman of Douglas Elliman a major agency in NYC was taken by him and he is now his assistant. Jake learned from his father to be fair to all and not be exclusive. He feels that antisemitism stems from Jews keeping together and being successful financially stimulating envy by being exclusive of others.