At the Jewish Funders Network 2019 International Conference, Marcy Gringlas of Seed the Dream Foundation discussed the urgent task of meeting the needs of Holocaust survivors.

A webinar on the state of Holocaust knowledge and education in North America, with experts from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (Claims Conference), Yad Vashem, and the Azrieli Foundation.

On this past Yom HaShoah, the Claims Conference released the findings of a Holocaust Awareness and Knowledge Survey, conducted in the United States. The study revealed alarming gaps in knowledge; while most Americans have some level of awareness of the Holocaust, 41% of those surveyed, and two thirds of Millennials, did not know about Auschwitz, and one third of all those surveyed thought fewer than 2 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.

The first books by Elie Wiesel that I read were not about the Holocaust; they were Spanish translations of his works about the Hasidic masters, given to me as a Bar Mitzvah present by Rabbi Marshall Meyer. In fact, for many years I didn’t even know that Elie Wiesel was associated with the Holocaust in any way.