1950 – Detroit, Michigan. My Grandmother’s stories of her beloved family who were killed during the Holocaust, inspired me to find and celebrate the brave women who successfully defied the Third Reich.

Both of my grandparents were fortunate to have left Lithuania for the USA decades before the 1941 German Occupation, during which their beloved families were killed.

My grandmother always told me I reminded her of her baby sister, Rivka, who perished during the Holocaust.

Frieda was name a National Hero of France for her courageous work in the Jewish French Resistance saving 100s of Jewish children. In 2012, she took me to the apartment building in the Marais district of Paris, where she’d lived in with her mother until July 1942 when the French rounded up and deported French Jews. In a daring rescue, Frieda was able to save her mother from being sent to Auschwitz.

Named “Righteous Among Gentiles” by Yad Vashem, Diet was in the Dutch Underground. She rode her bicycle around Amsterdam saving and hiding Jews. She was captured and imprisoned, but upon her release, immediately resumed her Underground activities. In 2012, she shared her story and photos with me.

What a joy it was to share the spotlight with Manya (1923/Dombrovitsa, Poland – 2015/Farmington Hills, Michigan), who captivated our standing-room-only audience with her stories of life with the Partisans in the eastern Poland forests, nursing the injured and ill, blowing up German trains, surviving typhus alone in the snow, and fooling the Germans into thinking she was a crazy Polish girl.

Faye (1919/Lenin, Poland – 2021/Toronto, Canada) and I are beaming after the audience’s enthusiastic response to our presentation for The Jewish Genealogy Society of Toronto. Faye’s stories of eluding the Nazis, armed combat, raiding towns, assisting surgeons in the forest, while also taking, developing, and hiding photos of partisan life, never fail to leave audiences awestruck and inspired.

Having extensively researched the martyred young German student, Sophie Scholl (1921/Forchtenberg, Germany – 1943/Munich, Germany) and her compatriots in “The White Rose” anti-Nazi resistance group at the University of Munich, I was overwhelmed to be able to walk through the school’s plaza, where bronzed facsimiles of their resistance “leaflets” commemorate the determination of these young, idealistic–and tragically doomed–students, to save Germany from the Third Reich.

Another overwhelming experience was my visit to the Rosenstrasse Memorial which commemorates hundreds of courageous and determined, non-Jewish German women who in February – March 1943, staged a protest at the former Jewish Community Center on Rosenstrasse, demanding the release of their Jewish husbands and mixed-race sons, who had been rounded up and imprisoned there. Against all odds, the women’s refusal to leave–despite the brutal weather and the vicious threats of Nazis–resulted in the release of approximately 1800 of the 2000 Jewish men. The others were sent to their deaths at Auschwitz.

When I read Anne Frank’s, The Diary of a Young Girl, as a 6th grader, I became determined to visit her hiding place in the “secret annex.” Almost sixty years later, I finally made it—despite an injury that required the use of a cane. Even before I entered that dark, cramped, airless hideout, I could not hold back tears as I felt the spirits of that brave, doomed, precious Jewish girl and her family, who defied the Nazis by hiding.

What a delight to meet and become close friends with Aleks and Helena at the Peninsula Jewish Community Center in Foster City, California, where we were making presentations. They specialize in fashioning beautiful bronze mezuzahs from the remnants of mezuzahs they had salvaged from the doorposts of former Jewish homes in Poland. A few months after our meeting, I was honored to bring their exhibit to Las Vegas and Reno where it was appreciated by hundreds of exhibit attendees. Our cardboard yellow daffodils—which Helena designed for Warsaw’s Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, are in honor of the anniversary of the April 19, 1942 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

So awed and honored to stand amidst the precious stones salvaged from the destroyed Warsaw Ghetto — as I shared stories of this heroic, doomed uprising. I could feel the teachers begin to understand the fierce Jewish fighters who had rather perish than go, “silently like lambs to the slaughter.” I wear a yellow daffodil as part of the annual international commemoration of the April 1942 Uprising. I am very grateful to Susan Dubin, Director of the Sperling Kronberg Mack Holocaust Resource Center, also housed at Temple Beth Sholom, for her outstanding programs teaching educators how to incorporate Holocaust Education into their various curricula.

It is a deeply emotional moment as I hold the photos and love letters Diet Eman had received from her boyfriend, Hein Seitsma, before he was denounced for his heroic Underground activities, and then murdered in Dachau. Diet had donated these precious letters to NIOD, and I had promised her that I would visit and find them. Another visitor took the photo so I could send it to Diet.

What a surprise, honor, and thrill that Spain’s Ambassador to Lithuania attended—and enjoyed! — my presentation at the Vilnius Jewish Library! So many emotions as I returned to Vilna, where my family had lived for generations before being murdered by the Nazis and their willing collaborators. While making my presentation about anti-Nazi resistance, and showing images of my great-grandparents, aunts and uncles, who had walked the cobblestone streets outside the library, I could feel their spirits thanking me for honoring their memory alive through Holocaust Education.

Along with dear friend, American ex-pat, Karen Reb Rudel, Founder of “Sightseers Delight Paris Walking Tours,” I was thrilled and grateful to visit Le Chambon sur Lignon, the little village in south-central France, whose “Conspiracy of Kindness,” under the direction of Father Andre Trocme and his wife, Magda, was responsible for saving 3,000+ Jews “right under the noses” of the Vichy police and the Germans. The Trocmes’ daughter, my friend, Nelly Trocme Hewett, graciously provided an introduction to Mayor Eliane Wauquiez-Motte, who was kind enough to greet us and give us a personal tour of the fascinating new Resistance Museum.

Lots of joyful tears being shed as Frieda and I see each other again after 2 years. She had recently moved from her apartment to the Rothschild Foundation’s Senior Residence. Ironically, in 1942, Frieda’s first rescue of Jewish children took place at a school on this campus. I was honored and thrilled to accept Frieda’s invitation to join her at the home of Georges Loinger, a leader in the French Jewish Resistance, to celebrate his 108th Birthday!

Another overwhelming moment! Visiting with French National Hero, Georges Loinger, at his home. In addition to the press, and government officials, celebrants included many of the adults who Georges had saved when they were children, along with their children and grandchildren—all of whom owe their lives to Georges.

Along with her husband, Serge, Beate dedicated her life to investigating, finding, and making sure that many Nazi war-criminals have been captured and convicted. The Klarsfelds were close friends of the surviving members of the Jewish French Resistance, including Georges Loinger and Frieda Wattenberg. Meeting Beate at George’s 108th Birthday celebration was a lifetime highlight for me.

Such a sweet moment with Miriam (1935/Warsaw, Poland – 2022/Ann Arbor, Michigan), as we celebrate the release of our book, A VICTORY FOR MIRIAM: The Little Girl Who Defied the Nazis. Over 120 attendees honored the indomitable Miriam, who along with her parents, lived outdoors in the forest with combat partisans. Surviving the brutal weather, starvation, thirst, disease, Nazis, and bounty-hunters, little Miriam was given a gun for her 9th birthday in honor of her actions as a very young partisan. She learned how to dis-assemble, clean, re-assemble, aim and shoot this gun—not an easy task in the forest— as part of her responsibilities.

Such an honor and joy to moderate a panel of informative and inspiring Child Holocaust Survivors, Raymonde Fiol, Jackie Beer, and the late Frieda Rosenthal, who had been hidden by Gentiles in France. Hiding a child was a courageous act of anti-Nazi defiance all too often resulted in the deaths of the rescuers and their families, as well as the Jewish child. The alertness, quick-wittedness, ability and courage of the hidden Jewish children to assume a false identity also constituted anti-Nazi defiance. As always, I wear the yellow daffodil in honor of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.