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.
Bonnie Srolovitz-Berkowicz & Michael Berkowitz
Michael Berkowicz and Bonnie Srovolitz-Berkowicz are an artist-designer team. Michael was born in Siberia in 1944 after his parents escaped the Nazis in Poland. After the war, they returned to Poland to reconnect with their large families only to find that none had survived. He lived in post-war Poland until the age of 18 when he and his family immigrated to the US.
Michael, along with his wife and partner Bonnie Srolovitz-Berkowicz, have long been involved in designing sanctuary interiors and furnishings, donor artscapes/walls/sculptures, Holocaust Memorials, and other items to enhance rituals and beautify synagogues. Their commission to design the outdoor San Juan Holocaust Memorial monument and plaza was especially meaningful. Michael Berkowicz was active in the development of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, now called POLIN, in Warsaw, Poland, and a founding member of the Friends of the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival. He was founding member and past president of the American Guild of Judaic Art. Michael is a past chair of the American Institute of Architect’s Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture (AIA/IFRAA) and past president of Faith & Form. Their work is included in the permanent collection of the Jewish Museum in NY. They have been featured in many publications and have received numerous awards including: the Award for Excellence in Ceremonial & Ritual Art, Spertus Museum Judaica Prize Finalist, numerous ADEX awards, and numerous AIA/IFRAA awards for Religious Art and Liturgical Furnishings.
Amy Clark
Amy Clark is a member of the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. She currently serves as a regional director on the Council’s Program Planning Committee and is the Western NC coordinator for the Council’s Traveling Exhibits. She is a part of the Council’s team of educators who are writing the new curriculum for North Carolina’s Gizella Abramson Holocaust Education Act. A former secondary media coordinator, Amy 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.
John Cox
John Cox is an associate professor of Global Studies at UNC Charlotte and directs the Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Studies there. Before coming to UNCC in 2011, John founded and directed a genocide & human rights-studies center at Florida Gulf Coast University. Cox earned his Ph.D. in History at UNC-Chapel Hill. Cox has written and lectured widely on racism and genocide as well as resistance and has been active in human-rights, anti-racist, and pro-liberation activism since his college years in the '80s. His book on modern genocide and racism, To Kill a People: Genocide in the 20th Century (Oxford University Press, 2017) will be published in a 2nd edition later this year (2023), adding a chapter on the Bosnian genocide of 1992-1995. With Dr. Tom Porter of A&T State University in Greensboro, John is also completing a book titled Genocide: A Thematic Approach (Anthem Press, 2024). Cox's earlier publications include a book on anti-Nazi resistance, Circles of Resistance: Leftist, Jewish, and Youth Dissidence during the Third Reich (2009) and a co-edited book on genocide denial published last year.
Jewel Davis
Jewel Davis is an Education Librarian and Associate Professor in a PreK-12 Curriculum Materials Center at Appalachian State University. Her research interests include diversity in youth literature and arts-based care in higher education. She has served on the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Jury and is the president of the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of NCTE (ALAN).
Margaret Gregor
Margaret Gregor is a Professor and the Coordinator of the Instructional Materials Center in the University Libraries at Appalachian State University. She researches the use of children's literature to teach social studies topics and strategies for teaching information-seeking skills to undergraduates. She serves currently as the Secretary of the Association of College and Research Libraries Education and Behavioral Sciences Section Instruction for Educators Committee.
Lee Holder
Lee Holder has been a member of the North Carolina 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 North Carolina’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 North Carolina 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 C. Hudnall holds a dual appointments as a senior lecturer in the Department of History and the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies (Global Studies). 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 20 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 U.S.), and the Yad Vashem Award for Children’s Holocaust Literature (Israel), Kathy has written unforgettable stories inspired by real events.
Kathy 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.
Judy La Pietra
As a Holocaust educator, Judy has been selected by the most esteemed Holocaust educational organizations, including the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Anti-Defamation League, and the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, to facilitate teacher training and youth leadership programs. Judy was a professor, serving as adjunct faculty at UNC Charlotte from 2010, developing and teaching courses in Genocide & Human Rights Studies, including crafting student trips to Germany and Poland. Judy has extensive experience as a history classroom educator in both New York and North Carolina.
Judy is a doctoral student in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Gratz College currently working on her dissertation in post-genocidal reconciliation. She received an M.A. in Holocaust Genocide Studies from Gratz College, and M.S. in Secondary Education and History from Queens College, City University of New York, and her B.A. in political science from Queens College, City University of New York.
Margot Lobree
Margot Lobree is a child survivor of the Holocaust who escaped Nazi Germany on a Kindertransport to the United Kingdom in April 1939. Now in her nineties, Lobree continues to give testimony about her experiences during the Holocaust. Often with Lynda Moss, Margot She speaks to high school and middle school students and teachers in North Carolina about the consequences of hate and antisemitism.
Amy McDonald
Amy McDonald is a teacher at Shades Valley High School, in Birmingham, Alabama, where she currently teaches U.S. History and Holocaust Studies.
In her work with Holocaust Studies, Amy attended the 2011 Jewish Foundation for the Righteous Summer Institute for Teachers. After completion of this training, Amy became an Alfred Lerner Fellow and attends the JFR Advanced Seminar in January of each year. In 2012, 2015, and 2017 Amy participated in The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous European Study Programs to Germany, Poland, and Lithuania.
In December 2013, Amy received The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous Robert I. Goldman Award for Excellence in Holocaust Education. In 2014, Amy was accepted into the U.S. Holocaust Museum Teacher Fellowship Program, which is held in Washington, D.C. After completing this program in July 2015, Amy is recognized as a Teacher Fellow of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
In 2021, Amy authored the book, Word Smugglers: A Story of Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto. This book tells the story of the Ringelblum Archive, an underground archive of the Warsaw Ghetto detailing Jewish life under Nazi occupation.
Victoria Milstein
Originally from New York, Victoria Carlin Milstein has lived and traveled around the world and now resides in Greensboro, NC. Victoria 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. Victoria’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. Victoria 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 North Carolina Holocaust curriculum for public schools. She is the Executive Producer of “She Wouldn’t Take Off Her Boots,” a documentary on the project that will be aired nationally in the fall of 2023.
Victoria currently serves on numerous community boards and organizations, including the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust, the North Carolina Folk Festival, and the Visitors Board of University of North Carolina 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.
Victoria 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. Visit: TEDXGreensboro
Lynda Moss
Lynda Moss is a retired high school and university teacher of 43 years. She is the daughter of a Holocaust Survivor, and a member of the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. She speaks to high school and middle school students and teachers in North Carolina about the consequences of antisemitism on her family in Russia and Germany.
Sheryl Ochayon
Sheryl Ochayon holds a BA in History from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a JD from Harvard Law School. After a long legal career, she began working at Yad Vashem in 2005. Ochayon currently serves as Yad Vashem’s Project Director for the Echoes and Reflections program, a program that combines the resources and expertise of three world leaders in education – the Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation, and Yad Vashem – with the goal of preparing secondary educators to effectively engage students in Holocaust education through a multimedia program that is meaningful, comprehensive, accessible, and integrated. Ochayon has represented Yad Vashem in different contexts both in the US and in Israel, speaking on various topics at seminars and international conferences. She has made Aliyah to Israel from New York in 1995.
Anne Parsons
Dr. Anne Parsons (she/they) is the Director of Public History at UNC Greensboro and serves on the NC Council on the Holocaust. She is the author of From Asylum to Prison and the exhibit Care and Custody: Past Responses to Mental Hospitals. Currently, she directs Roots of Resistance: The Tuchyn Story, an exhibit about a Jewish uprising in 1942 in Ukraine, where her extended family members perished.
Lois Roman
Lois Roman is a Trustee of the Memorial Scrolls Trust (MST), and serves as the US Representative based on the East Coast. The Memorial Scrolls Trust is a London based non-profit that oversees the legacy of 1,564 Czech Torah scrolls that survived the Shoah. After a miraculous story of survival, these scrolls arrived in London and were dispersed on permanent loan to caring communities around the world. Lois began her involvement with MST several years ago following a long career on Wall Street as a money manager. She has an MA in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from the Fish Center at Yeshiva University, has an undergraduate degree from Brandeis University and an MBA from Columbia Business School.
Judith Schindler
Rabbi Judy is an activist, author, professor, rabbi, mother, and wife. She is the Sklut Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Stan Greenspon Holocaust and Social Justice Education Center at Queens University of Charlotte. She was named Rabbi Emerita of Temple Beth El in Charlotte, North Carolina, after serving as Senior Rabbi from 2003-2016 and as Associate Rabbi from 1998-2003. Rabbi Judy received her Bachelor’s Degree in Clinical Psychology from Tufts University (magna cum laude in 1988); her Master’s from the Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles (1993); her rabbinic ordination at the Hebrew Union College in New York (1995); and an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from the Hebrew Union College (2020). She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Hebrew Letters from the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Her focus is on interfaith relations.
Sruli and Lisa
International Klezmer personalities Sruli and Lisa have performed on PBS-TV and National Public Radio as well as at festivals, concerts and synagogues all over the world. They were featured at the Cracow Festival of Jewish Culture in Poland, the Jerusalem Cultures Center, and in Weimar, Germany. They are scholars of Klezmer and Chassidic music and dance and teach workshops at synagogues, universities and schools around the country. They are on the Faculty of KlezKanada in Montreal and have performed at the prestigious Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto. Sruli is currently the spiritual leader of Temple Shalom Synagogue Center in Auburn, Maine.
Alty Weinreb
Rabbi Alty Weinreb is the rabbi and cantor of the Temple of the High Country, 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 BA 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.