Rabbi Dr. Michael Berenbaum
Rabbi Dr. Michael Berenbaum serves as the director of the Sigi Ziering Institute, exploring the ethical and religious implications of the Holocaust. He holds a professorship in Jewish Studies at American Jewish University. He was the executive editor of the "New Encyclopedia Judaica," a second edition of the monumental 1972 work, which now consists of 22 volumes. For three years, he was president and chief executive officer of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. In addition, he served as the first director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)’s Research Institute and, from 1988 and 1993, held the position of project director, overseeing the USHMM’s creation.
His work in film has won Emmy Awards and Academy Awards. Dr. Berenbaum has authored and edited 20 books, scores of scholarly articles and hundreds of journalistic pieces.
Zohara Boyd
Dr. Zohara Boyd is professor emerita in Appalachian State University's Department of English. Born in Poland during the Holocaust, Dr. Boyd was kept alive as a hidden child until after the war, when she and her family migrated to the United States. She is a passionate voice for the victims of the Holocaust and speaks about her childhood experiences across the state.
Amy Clark
Amy Clark is a member of the NC Council on the Holocaust. She currently serves as a regional director on the Council’s Program Planning Committee and as the Western NC coordinator for the Council’s Traveling Exhibits. A former secondary media coordinator, Clark retired in 2018 after 29 years in public education. She created and taught the first Holocaust elective class at her high school before retiring and continues to work with teachers and students through the Council’s workshops and webinars.
Freylach Time! Klezmer Band
Freylach Time! is one of the most popular Klezmer bands in NC. The core trio, formed in Durham, NC, in 1998, features Riki Friedman on clarinet, Mike McQuown on accordion and Stewart Aull on string bass. Karen Kumin sings with the group.
Lee Holder
Lee Holder has been a member of the NC Council on the Holocaust since 2003. He presently serves as a regional director on the Council’s Program Planning Committee and the eastern NC coordinator for the Council’s Traveling Exhibits. He is part of the Council’s team writing the new curriculum for NC’s Gizella Abramson Holocaust Education Act.
Holder taught social studies for 32 years before retiring in 2020. His accomplishments included the creation of a Holocaust and Modern Genocides course, 1995. He was a Teacher in Residence at the Appalachian State University Summer Symposium on the Holocaust from 2008 to 2019. Holder was a 2005/2006 Museum Teacher Fellow with the United States Holocaust Museum (USHMM). In 2010, he was chosen the United States recipient of the Irena Sendler “Repairing the World” Award. He has traveled to Europe with both the NC Center for the Advancement of Teaching (NCCAT) and Centropa to further study Holocaust sites and themes.
In 2020, Holder established the Gizella Gross Abramson Resource Center for Holocaust and Civil Rights in Kinston, NC.
Amy Hudnall
Amy Hudnall holds a dual appointments as a senior lecturer in the Departments of History and Interdisciplinary Studies (Global Studies) and is the Interim Director for the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies. She is the co-director for the Martin and Doris Rosen Symposium. She is also a Fellow at the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies and a member of the Advisory Board of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies.
Hudnall's work focuses on key aspects of genocide, in particular trauma theory, perpetrators and cross-cultural conflict. Hudnall has written numerous articles and book chapters, as well as presented at multiple venues around the world. Hudnall has been affiliated with the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies since its inception 22 years ago.
Kathy Kacer
Kathy Kacer has written more than 30 books focusing on the Second World War and the Holocaust, including "The Secret of Gabi’s Dresser," "Hiding Edith," "To Look a Nazi in the Eye," "Shanghai Escape," "The Brushmaker's Daughter," "Broken Strings" and "Under the Iron Bridge." A winner of the Jewish Book Awards (Canada and the US), and the Yad Vashem Award for Children’s Holocaust Literature (Israel), Kacer has written unforgettable stories inspired by real events.
Kacer lives in Toronto and teaches writing at the University of Toronto. She lectures in universities about teaching sensitive material to young people. She speaks to children in schools and libraries about the importance of the Holocaust and keeping its memory alive.
Rebecca Keel
Rebecca Keel is an educator and diversity consultant with over 20 years of experience. Earlier in her career, Keel was a social studies teacher for ten years, working in classrooms in rural NC and NYC. While in NYC, she was a founding staff member of a small high school in Brooklyn and served as an administrator across NYC schools, coaching school leaders and teachers.
Currently, Keel facilitates anti-bias trainings for schools, hospitals, community organizations and law enforcement for the Anti-Defamation League, Holocaust education programs with Echoes & Reflections and, working with K-12 school architecture firms, supports educators in analyzing their use of space within the context of their curriculum.
For the last several years, Keel was the Project Coordinator for the Willesden READS program, a partnership between USC Shoah Foundation and Hold On To Your Music. She worked with school leaders, cultural and historical institutions to plan and implement the Willesden READ program, bringing it to thousands of students around the world. Prior, Keel served as a Southern States Outreach Consultant for Echoes & Reflections, forming new community, school and district partnerships to bring Holocaust education to middle and high school educators. Keel is now the Program Director for Hold On To Your Music Foundation.
Keel holds a B.A. in Sociology from the University of NC Asheville, focusing on the intersection of race and poverty, a M.S.Ed. in School Leadership from Baruch College and a M.S. in Interior Design from Pratt Institute, with a focus on K-12 school architecture. In addition, Keel was a guest on the New Orleans radio show, WBOK, invited to discuss the importance of recognizing antisemitism and its relationship to other forms of hate as a symptom of an unhealthy society, the role conversation and storytelling can do to break down barriers between groups and the historical trauma marginalized groups of people bring into interactions with each other. Further, Keel represented Echoes & Reflections as the Holocaust educator for The National World War II Electronic Field Trip, which has been viewed by 150,000+ students worldwide. Keel’s passion is to create space - physical and interpersonal - in communities, schools and organizations that inspire the better humanity in each of us. She currently resides in New Orleans, LA.
Chuck Lieberman
Biography coming soon.
Rafael Medoff
As one of the leading experts on the Holocaust, Dr. Rafael Medoff has been an outspoken critic of western countries and their reticence to support European Jews before and during WWII. According to Dr. Medoff, at every turn where America could have supported the persecuted population, they instead callously went out of their way to find reasons not to get involved.
Medoff is the founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, based in Washington, DC, which focuses on America's response to Nazism and the Holocaust. He has authored more than 20 books about the Holocaust, Zionism and American Jewish history, including "The Historical Dictionary of Zionism," and has contributed to the Encyclopedia Judaica and many other reference volumes.
Medoff has also taught and lectured at US universities and is a member of the Committee on Ethics in Jewish Leadership, which promotes the values of democracy, accountability and transparency in American Jewish Organizations.
Victoria Milstein
Originally from New York, Victoria Milstein has lived and traveled around the world and now resides in Greensboro, NC. Milstein studied at The School of Visual Arts in New York City and The Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem. Her portraits hang in private and public collections globally. Milstein’s practice includes socially engaged public art and programming along with sculpture and painting. In 2021, she was featured in “Pieces of Now”, the award-winning exhibit at the Greensboro History Museum documenting her community’s response to the social justice protests in 2020.
Her sculpture, “She Wouldn’t Take Off Her Boots,” was erected in Greensboro’s LeBauer Park in April of 2023. Milstein is the co- founder of Women of the Shoah, the non-profit associated with the project and will sponsor art and educational programs as part of the NC Holocaust curriculum for public schools. She is the Executive Producer of “She Wouldn’t Take Off Her Boots,” a documentary on the project that aired nationally in the fall of 2023.
Milstein currently serves on numerous community boards and organizations, including the NC Council on the Holocaust, the NC Folk Festival and the Visitors Board of University of NC at Greensboro. She also serves as a Commissioner for the Arts for the City of Greensboro. She is a recipient of the Anne Hummel YWCA Mission Award for her work in establishing Victoria’s House, an art center for children experiencing homelessness.
Milstein was a 2018 TedX Greensboro Speaker and operates VCM Art Studio, a place of mentorsing and fellowship, with model drawings, workshops and community events for all demographics.
Anne Patton
Anne Patton is a technology communications executive working at IBM, Lenovo and Ericsson and other start-ups based in London, New York City and Research Triangle Park, NC. She grew up in Chapel Hill, NC, and is a passionate Tar Heel.
Patton is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with multiple majors in English, political science and American history and The London School of Economics with master's degree in politics. Patton has traveled extensively in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America for work and fun.
Peter Petschauer
Dr. Peter Petschauer is professor emerita in the Department of History at Appalachian State University. He arrived in the United States at 17 and worked his way through a degree in history specializing in Russian Studies. Dr. Petschauer is a prolific author, much of his work is about how he processed the knowledge that his father was an SS officer during WWII and his WWII life experiences as a child that influenced his later life. He speaks frequently about this process in tandem with Holocaust child survivor Dr. Zohara Boyd.
Cristy Phillips
Cristy Phillips is a history teacher at South Iredell High School in Troutman, NC. She enjoys sparking interest in history for her students with escape rooms, trench warfare simulations and other hands-on activities. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, writing, photography, listening to music and spending time with family, friends and her dog, Kayo.
Juanita Ray
Juanita Ray is a retired public school teacher. She worked for 32 years teaching high school speech, theatre and history for Randolph County Schools. She now works as an adjunct professor at Greensboro College where she teaches in the Theatre Arts department and supervises student teachers.
Ray is a Museum Teacher Fellow of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She has been an appointed member of the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust since 2015. With the Council, she has served as as Co-Director of Holocaust Workshops, a member of the Education Planning Committee, a Regional Director and, most recently, helped create curriculum resources for the Gizella Abramson Holocaust Education Act.
Ray has worked with the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching since 2016 on both Holocaust teacher seminars and teacher trips to study at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Leonard Rogoff
Dr. Leonard Rogoff has taught at the University of NC at Chapel Hill, Duke University and NC Central University. Former president of the Southern Jewish Historical Society, Dr. Rogoff currently serves as historian and president of Jewish Heritage NC. He is a frequent lecturer and contributor to journals, anthologies and encyclopedias. Rogoff's books include "Homelands: Southern Jewish Identity in Durham and Chapel Hill," "NC (2000)," "Down Home: Jewish Life in NC (2010)" and "Gertrude Weil: Jewish Progressive in the New South (2017)."
Rob Simon
Dr. Rob Simon is an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE). He has been a teacher educator since 2003.
Dr. Simon is the academic director of the Centre for Urban Schooling and director of the Toronto Writing Project, one of two sites of the National Writing Project in Canada. Simon began his career in education in 1998 as a founding teacher of Life Learning Academy, a high school for youth who experienced struggles in traditional school settings. He is the author of numerous articles and co-author of "eaching Literature to Adolescents" (2021).
Simon’s current research explores how teachers and students inquire into and co-research social issues, including the Holocaust, and how they use the arts, film, writing and other creative mediums to share their findings with the world.
Leslie Starobin
Dr. Leslie Starobin is a Professor Emerita of Art at Framingham State University in Massachusetts. Throughout her career, Dr. Starobin has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2023 Arts and Culture Community Impact Grant from Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) in Boston, MA, to support Starobin’s photo-narrative series, “Looming in the Shadows of Lodz,” on display from July 5 – December 7 at the Turchin Center of the Visual Arts. This grant also supported "Marching All Night: The Testimony of Dorka Berger née Altman," which will play in the media gallery. Notably, this video testimony, produced in collaboration with Starobin’s son, Ori Segev, will also be screened in Poland at the 80th anniversary commemoration of the liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto on August 19, 2024.
Starobin has also received creative arts and research grants from Hadassah Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; Massachusetts Cultural Council, Boston, MA; Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, NY, NY and the National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C. Starobin’s artwork is in the permanent collection of many museums, including Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Jewish Museum, NY, NY; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, NY, NY; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA and Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA. Throughout her career, Starobin has had numerous solo exhibitions, including a 2012-13 at the Holocaust Museum Houston, Houston, TX.
Rabbi Alty Weinreb
Rabbi Alty Weinreb is the rabbi and cantor of the Temple of the High Country in Boone, NC. He draws from Hasidic, Israeli and world music traditions, as well as from contemporary music. He is a singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist. His love of music fills his spiritual life and constitutes a vital and substantial part of his Shabbat and holiday services. He seamlessly merges modernity with tradition.
Rabbi Alty comes from a background of “Black Hat” Yeshivas and Hassidic synagogues. After attending high school at Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn, he spent an additional four years at the St. Louis Rabbinical College where he received a Bachelor of Judaic Studies and Rabbinic Ordination from Dean Rabbi Yitzchak Kleinman. Rabbi Alty attended Yeshiva University’s Belz School of Music, earning a B.A. in Cantorial Studies. He prepared many Bar and Bat Mitzvah students from day schools, public schools and Hebrew schools. Prior to joining the Temple of the High Country, Rabbi Alty served as Cantor at the Congregational Shir at Hayam of Swampscott, MA, Temple Hillel in North Woodmere, NY, and Highland Park Temple in Highland Park, NJ.
Tom White
Dr. Tom White is the Coordinator of Educational Outreach for the Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies at Keene State College. He taught for 16 years at Keene High School before receiving a Fellowship to create his current position. He has served as a researcher for Stephen Hooper's documentary film "An American Nurse At War" and as historical consultant for David DeArville's documentary film "Telling Their Stories: NH Holocaust Survivors Speak Out," produced in 2004.
He served on the Diocese of Manchester's Diocesan Ecumenical Commission for Interfaith Relations; is the co-chair and producer of the Cohen Center’s annual Kristallnacht Commemoration; serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of Holocaust Organizations (AHO); has participated as observer and facilitator in the Global Raphael Lemkin Seminar for Genocide Prevention at the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation; received NEA New Hampshire’s Champion of Human and Civil Rights Award in 2009; in 2015 was named a Peace Ambassador by the Center for Peacebuilding from Bosnia and Herzegovina and in 2017 was inducted on the Keene High School (NH) Wall of Honor as a distinguished alumni.
John Withers
Ambassador Dr. John Withers was born in 1948, in High Point, NC. Dr. Withers spent much of his childhood abroad when my parents joined the Foreign Service in 1957. Withers graduated from Harvard University in 1971 with a bachelor's degree in history. He earned his Master of Arts Degree in East Asian Studies from McGill University in 1975.
A year after graduating from Yale University (1983) with a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Modern Chinese History, Withers began pursuing his foreign service career. His first posting was as a political officer at The Hague from 1985 to 1986. He later had several diplomatic postings, including in Nigeria, Russia and Ireland. Withers was appointed Ambassador to Albania by President George W. Bush in August 2007. He is married to Maryruth Coleman, a retired Senior Foreign Officer.
He is an avid tennis player, an amateur Chinese cook, a passionate Red Sox fan and an aspiring writer. His first book "Balm in Gilead: A Story from the War" tells of a company of African American soldiers under his father’s command, who rescue two young Holocaust survivors from Dachau at the end of World War II. He is now preparing a memoir of my mother’s life in the Jim Crow era.
Mark Wygoda
Dr. Mark Wygoda was a professor of biology at McNeese State University in Louisiana prior to his retirement in 2022 as professor emeritus. While at McNeese State, in addition to teaching and conducting scientific research, he edited his late father's Holocaust memoir, which later was published by the University of Illinois Press under the title "In the Shadow of the Swastika." For the past 30 years, he has been giving presentations about his father's Holocaust resistance activities at Holocaust commemorations, schools, religious organizations, civic clubs and other venues across the country. He currently lives in Durham, NC, where he is a member of the Holocaust Speakers Bureau of the Center for Holocaust, Human Rights and Genocide Education of NC.