Names, Not Numbers

The Gift of Students and Holocaust Survivors Connecting with Each Other

The Names, Not Numbers © (NNN) program, created by educator Ms. Tova Fish-Rosenberg, is a unique, intergenerational approach to Holocaust education that has connected 2,000 survivors and WWII veterans with more than 6,000 students worldwide. This year, 29 Middle School students heard the tragic but inspiring stories of six Holocaust survivors and learned how to connect, interview, and film them for a documentary. Although the grand premiere and dinner with the survivors had to be put on hold because of COVID-19, a beautiful NNN Highlights video, created by the students, was shared virtually with the entire faculty and student body in June.

Survivors Dr. Rene Alkalay, Mr. Erwin Forley, Mr. Max Lerner, Ms. Paulette Barrett Singer and Ms. Ruth Zimbler each met with students to share their stories. The story of Dr. Yaffa Eliach, A”H, was shared by her daughter, Professor Smadar Eliach Rosensweig (ES 1975; HS 1979).

Students learned that Dr. Alkalay, born in Yugoslavia, lost his father at only nine months old, and spent the beginning of his life at Rab concentration camp; Ms. Zimbler, from Austria, was rescued via the first Kindertransport out of Vienna; Ms. Barrett duped the Names, Not Numbers © was generously supported by Suzanne and Dr. Lawrence Fishman. Students are pictured here with Holocaust survivor Mr. Erwin Forley. Nazis by pretending that she was Catholic; Mr. Lerner, also from Austria, escaped to the U.S. during the Nazi occupation and became a spy novelist; Mr. Forley, who grew up in what is now the Czech Republic and Hungary, was sent to Auschwitz; Dr. Eliach, A”H, wife of Principal Emeritus Rabbi Dr. David Eliach, slimly escaped a massacre when she was six years old, learned four languages while trying to survive in a pigsty, and eventually lost her mother and brother to anti-Semitic Poles after the war. She played a critical role in creating the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., as well as the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City, which NNN students visited in the fall of 2019.

Aside from generating relationships with the survivors, students learned filmmaking from a professional cinematographer, conducted interviews and were responsible for videotaping the survivors themselves. By recording and preserving the legacy of these brave survivors, students themselves will become a part of history.

Mrs. Barbara Zelenetz, Liberal Arts Chairperson and NNN Coordinator, summed up this year’s experience, “These six heroic individuals have shown us their inner strength, their emunah, their belief in a better future. They inspire us to endure and overcome our present challenges, and to appreciate the simple things that we may have taken for granted in the past.”

“This entire experience has given me a deeper understanding of what it might have been like to live through such a horrifying time,” shared NNN participant

Joe Tawil.