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
Biography Coming Soon
Freylach Time! Klezmer Band
Freylach Time! is one of the most popular Klezmer bands in North Carolina. The core trio, formed in Durham, North Carolina, in 1998, features Riki Friedman on clarinet, Mike McQuown on accordion and Stewart Aull on string bass. Karen Kumin sings with the group.
Jennifer Goss
Jennifer Goss is the Project Director for Echoes & Reflections, a joint partnership of the ADL, USC Shoah Foundation, and Yad Vashem that provides resources for educators nationwide. A 19-year veteran Social Studies teacher, she holds a Master’s degree in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from West Chester University of Pennsylvania and a Master’s degree in American History from Pace University. She spent the last nine years of her career teaching at Staunton High School and currently works as an adjunct at Blue Ridge Community College. Goss serves on the board of the Virginia Holocaust Museum and was a member of the Virginia Commission to Combat Antisemitism.
In addition to her classroom teaching, Goss is a USHMM Teacher Fellow ‘10 and served as the inaugural Willesden Reads Project Fellow for the USC Shoah Foundation. She is the producer of the Emmy-nominated Holocaust documentary, Misa’s Fugue. Goss has published in several volumes; most recently authoring a chapter in the University of Wisconsin Press’ release, Teaching and Understanding the Holocaust.
Martin Herskovitz
Martin Herskovitz was born in the United States in 1955 to parents from Czechoslovakia, his mother, a Holocaust survivor. Herskovitz began second-generation survivor activities in 2000 as part of a second-generation internet group in which he began to publish poetry about his experience as a second-generation survivor and about creating a Holocaust narrative from silence. His poems were published in Midstream and Maggid.
After retirement, Herskovitz began to increase his activities in the field of Holocaust Remembrance to ensure the continuation of the narrative in the future generations. As part of the “Spiegel Fellows,” Herskovitz’s public activism for Holocaust remembrance is focused on two main areas: devising programming to help the coming generation formulate a credible and authentic narrative of the Holocaust in lieu of the generation of Survivors who are slowly disappearing, and (2) encouraging innovative approaches to Holocaust remembrance such as poetry, art, and performances to ensure the continuation of the emotional connection to the issue of Holocaust Remembrance.
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 North Carolina 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, North Carolina.
Amy Hudnall
Amy Hudnall holds dual appointments as a senior lecturer in the Departments of History and Interdisciplinary Studies (Global Studies) and is the Assistant 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 and 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 United States), 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.
Chuck Lieberman
Chuck Lieberman has served for decades as the “supporting central cedar pole” of the Boone Jewish Community (BJS) and the Temple of the High Country. He served as the BJS’s president for eight years, overseeing the construction of the Temple and a Temple lay leader. He serves as an instructor for B’nei Mitzvah to the Temple’s youth and prayerbook Hebrew and Pirkei Avot classes to its adults.
He is known and loved in the High Country as a Christmas tree and blueberry farmer. As an author, he wrote a regular column for the local Watauga Democrat called “Annals of a Jewish Christmas-Tree Farmer;” which was later made into a book series.
Amy McDonald
Amy McDonald is Director of Education at the Alabama Holocaust Education Center. She was an educator of United States History and Holocaust. In her work with Holocaust Studies, McDonald attended the 2011 Jewish Foundation for the Righteous Summer Institute for Teachers. After completion of this training, McDonald became an Alfred Lerner Fellow and attends the JFR Advanced Seminar in January of each year. In 2012, 2015, and 2017, McDonald participated in The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous European Study Programs to Germany, Poland, and Lithuania. She is the author of the book Word Smugglers.
Dr. Yaron Pasher
Dr. Yaron Pasher has been a faculty member at Western Galilee College since 2017, teaching in the Holocaust Studies program as well as in the Departments of Interdisciplinary Studies and Logistics in the School of Management. Since 2023, he serves as a visiting lecturer at Appalachian State University in the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies within the Department of History.
Dr. Pasher specializes in the comparative history of the Second World War and the Holocaust, integrating modern Jewish history, strategic thought, and wartime logistics in the 19th and 20th centuries. He was a fellow at the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem (2013-14) and held a fellowship with the Claims Conference (2014-16). His book, Holocaust versus Wehrmacht: How Hitler’s “Final Solution” Undermined the German War Effort, was published by the University Press of Kansas in 2015. Currently, he is working on a book focused on Albert Ganzenmüller and the Reichsbahn and is co-editing a special volume commemorating the 80th anniversary of the German invasion of the USSR (to be published) with University Press of Kansas. Pasher is also the editor of a special volume In tribute to the late Sir Martin Gilbert, published by S:I.M.O.N., the open-access e-journal of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (March, 2025). Since 2012, Pasher has served as Chief Editor of "Status Magazine": The Journal for Management and Strategic Thought (in Heb.).
Dr. Peter Petschauer
Dr. Peter Petschauer is a professor emerita in the Department of History at Appalachian State University. He arrived in the United States from Germany 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.
Laurie Schaefer
Laurie Schaefer is an experienced public high school educator of twenty-nine years. She taught English, and Social Injustice: The Holocaust and Modern Day Genocide. Trained by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at the Belfer National Conference in 1996, Schaefer pursued further education about the Holocaust, becoming a USHMM Museum Teacher Fellow in 2006. From 2010–18, Schaefer helped coordinate USHMM national conferences, presenting at the Belfer National Conference, training new Museum Teacher Fellows, and writing curriculum. She was appointed to the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust (NCCH) in 2018 and serves on the Education Committee. In September 2024, Schaefer was voted in as the Chair-Elect for the NCCH.
In the 2022–23 school year, Schaefer created a curriculum for the Women of the Shoah monument in Greensboro, North Carolina. She now works in other capacities for Women of the Shoah, training docents and working with education outreach. Schaefer is an Echoes and Reflections facilitator. She participated in a trip to Holocaust sites with the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching (NCCAT). She has also defeated cancer three times, survived a school shooting in 2021, retired from teaching in July of 2024, and is a published author.
Dr. 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 "Teaching 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.
Alison Vick
Alison Vick is the Historian and Program Coordinator for the Tennessee Holocaust Commission and a history professor with twelve years of teaching experience in Virgina and Tennessee. Trained as a historian of modern Germany and Eastern Europe, and as a public historian, her current research focuses on Holocaust distortion and denial, and the roles of Christian clergy and institutions during the Holocaust.
Currently, she spearheads the Commission’s interfaith clergy program which focuses on partnership and interreligious dialogue to counter contemporary antisemitism in communities across Tennessee. She serves as the Commission’s oral historian, and is a consultant for forthcoming exhibit at the East Tennessee Historical Society about local survivors and liberators. She is also deeply involved with educational and community programming, and Holocaust curriculum development.
Julie Weiner Wanderman
Biography Coming Soon
Shelly Weiner
Born in Rovno, Poland, Shelly Weiner was four years old when the Germans invaded Soviet-controlled Poland in June 1941, occupying her hometown. Six months later, the Nazis massacred 17,500 of the town’s Jewish residents, forcing the remaining Jews into a ghetto. Shelly and her mother managed to escape to the nearby village where her cousin Rachel Giralnik and her mother lived. They went into hiding on the farm of Christian neighbors until the Soviet army liberated their region in February 1944. Shelly met Frank Weiner in high school in Philadelphia and married in 1958, moving to Greensboro in 1972. They have three daughters and five grandchildren. Shelly continues to share her Holocaust experiences across the state, ensuring that the stories of survival and resilience are never forgotten.
Mark Weitzman
Mark Weitzman is the Chief Operating Officer of the World Jewish Restitution Organization. He previously served as Director of Government Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Weitzman is a member of the official US delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Authority (IHRA) where he chaired the Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial, chaired the Working Group on Holocaust Museums and Memorials, and spearheaded IHRA’s 2016 adoption of the Working Definition of Antisemitism. He was also the lead author of IHRA’s Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion which was adopted by IHRA in 2013.
Weitzman is currently co-editing the Routledge History of Antisemitism, scheduled for publication in May 2023. He contributed the chapters “Traditionalism or the Perennial Philosophy: Religionism, Politics, and the New Right” to the volume Contending with Antisemitism in a Rapidly Changing Political Climate (Indiana University Press) and “Antisemitism in Social Media and on the Web” to the Cambridge Companion to Antisemitism (Cambridge University Press). He was a winner of the 2007 National Jewish Book Award for best anthology for Antisemitism, the Generic Hatred: Essays in Memory of Simon Wiesenthal, which has appeared in French, Spanish, and Russian editions.
Dr. 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 De’Arville'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.