Wow – what an amazing program- Jennifer Rudick Zunikoff and Deborah Fripp crafted an amazing journey through a granddaughter’s Holocaust recounting of family love, resilience, determination, and a gift of appreciation between generations. And the experience didn’t stop there. I’m in awe of the steps taken for appreciation, learning, sharing and imagining. I’m intrigued for more.

Good liturgy bends time. It has a way of taking the past and bringing it into the now, connecting us generationally. It takes you to your descendants and brings your ancestors to you. You really captured that.

I would 100% recommend her because she was able to captivate us and tell us stories that are relevant to what we are learning.

I didn’t know how serious the situation was for the people living there, as I mostly just learned about the facts or the big picture, not the stories of specific people who had to go through that event.

I like how they told the stories in a way that felt very personal. Before Dr. Fripp’s visit, the Holocaust felt like a terrible historical event that we were researching in class. I didn’t really understand it on a more personal level. After Dr. Fripp’s visit, I had a better understanding of how the people felt.

The Flower Mound Public Library has collaborated with Teach the Shoah for several years to bring programs to our community in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Their leadership team and presenters are experienced, knowledgeable, and an absolute joy to work with. These touching remembrance ceremonies enable people of all backgrounds to hear the powerful stories of those whose lives were changed forever by the Holocaust. Teach the Shoah is a valuable asset to our community, and we are grateful for their dedication to ensuring that these stories are not forgotten. We hope to continue partnering with them to bring high-quality, educational programs to the Library for years to come.

How to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive without living witnesses poses a critical dilemma for those who care deeply about the history of the Jewish people. Light from the Darkness offers a powerful tool to help future generations bear witness, to understand the history of the Shoah, and to apply its universal themes to modern times.

I have had the privilege of working with Deborah Fripp from Teach The Shoah.  I participated in the program during my tenure as Director of Education at the Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre.

The program teaches participants the skills to engage with the personal stories of those who survived the Shoah and those who did not.  This engagement gives docents and teachers the opportunity to share the lives of those who went through the Holocaust in “snapshot” moments. The stories are intended to open a window onto a life, share a moment of a life and convey the visitor to that moment. It allows the visitor to the museum to meet the human beings behind the numbers.

My experience learning this storytelling technique has been invaluable, it has changed the way I approach the exhibition and I have seen changes in the way the visitors respond to the exhibition.

Jennifer Rudick Zunikoff, master storyteller, is extremely generous in sharing her craft. My experience with her was in many ways life changing as she helped me discover the ability to share stories with others in a respectful and honest way.

I would recommend this program to all museums that teach a difficult and dark history. So often individual stories get lost in the attempt to teach the vastness of what happened, but it happened to individuals and it is vital that we remember them respectfully.  This is what Teach the Shoah does.

I really enjoyed her story telling. I think Dr. Fripp has such an amazing passion for history that she really made these stories interesting. I also believe that her delivering these stories made them easier to connect with and understand.

Dr. Fripp told real stories of the Holocaust with some background information of the person in first person. The first-person storytelling helped me connect and relate to the person and understand a bit more of what they went through and what was going through their minds over the years of the Holocaust through stories.

Oh my, there was a moment of striking oral history, ancestral traditions, ancestral connection as I heard my first “Their Stories, Our Voices” through Teach the Shoah. Time folded in on itself and honoring the living experience of a person came to the forefront.

Last night we had our graduation ceremony, and the kids were raving about the storytelling. This vehicle was more successful than anything I could ever have imagined.

What you have created is such a precious gem. We are all so blessed to have this sacred space.

I didn’t know about the personal individual hardships that certain Jewish teenagers went through… Teenagers! It blows my mind that they would have to go through these hardships.

This is beneficial because it helps you learn in a way that you cannot by reading articles.

Dr. Fripp brings new light to the understanding of passing on stories, the most interesting thing about these stories is that they are told through the perspective of the Jewish survivors. This adds more of a personal level and makes the students more intrigued.

Honestly I felt like I was inside the story experiencing what the person was going through.

Recently, we invited Dr. Fripp to our Grade 9 Humanities class in order to augment our unit on the Holocaust. Fripp worked closely with our teaching team prior to her visit in order to understand where we wanted to go, and she offered excellent suggestions on how to get there. She is an expert in Holocaust education, including the scope, sequence, and pacing of Holocaust curriculum.  Her tips to foreground personal stories, ahead of the perpetrators’ actions, gave us a new way to teach our unit. During Dr. Fripp’s visit, students were engaged, attentive, and even emotional when listening to three uniquely told stories.  Dr. Fripp provided background, thinking questions, and continued to relate her work to our unit’s driving question in a way that classroom teachers cannot always do. The value of storytelling was incalculable.  We will gladly invite her back in years to come.

A poignant and ultimately hopeful ritual. Using the words and visual artwork of the victims and survivors creates a deep and humanizing connection, reminding us to preserve and share the echoes of this tragedy to inspire future generations to ensure this history never repeats.

Dr. Fripp recounts stories from those who lived through the Holocaust from a first-person perspective. After the stories are told, the audience engages in a discussion about what the stories teach and a question about them posed by Dr. Fripp. This style of teaching the Holocaust helps students more closely connect with the people in the time period they are studying, and provides specific, concrete examples of how the Holocaust affected Europe that students can then use as a jumping-off point to analyze the Holocaust as a whole.