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TO BE CONTINUED...Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Rabbi Jeff Salkin
Welcome to TO BE CONTINUED… Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors, where we explore the intersections of memory, identity, and resilience. Our goal is to lift up the experiences of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, and to ask how survivors’ memories shaped their lives. How did resilience help form who they are today? And what legacy will they leave for the generations that follow? Within the next 10 years, most survivors will be gone. As the world loses these witnesses of the truths of the Holocaust, second- and third-generation voices are more important than ever.
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- 3 days ago1h 16m
Marisa Fox: The Shocking Secrets of Her Underground Mother
For most of her life, Marisa Fox believed her mother, Tamar, was a fiery redhead who fled Poland as a child on the eve of World War II, fought for Israel's independence, and reinvented herself as a New York doctor's wife. She insisted she was never a Holocaust victim. But the dates never added up, and every question ended with the same answer: "No more questions." Twenty years after her mother's death, an elderly relative let a secret slip, and Marisa set off on a decade-long investigation that took her around the world, from a town hall in Poland, to Nazi archives in Israel, and the site of a little-known forced labor camp for Jewish women. What she found was that her mother was nine years older than she claimed, with a different name and a past she had hidden from her family. In this deeply personal conversation, Marisa reflects on growing up with a mother who was both a trailblazing warrior and a strict parent, and how that past shaped their painful relationship during Marisa's adolescence. She sheds light on the vast, overlooked network of forced labor camps where people were brutalized, on the sexual violence long excluded from Holocaust memory, and on the suffering that silenced survivors whose stories didn't fit the expected narrative. She draws a direct line from that history to the sexual violence of October 7, and shares what her search has meant for her own children, her healing, and her fight against rising antisemitism today. Marisa Fox is an award-winning journalist and first-time feature director whose work explores gender, genocide, sexual violence, extremism, and Holocaust history. She has been a producer at FX, Channel 13/WNET, and MTV, a correspondent for New York Newsday, and a contributor to The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, CNN, and The New York Times. She is the writer, director, and producer of My Underground Mother, her debut documentary, which has earned numerous awards on the international film festival circuit, including an audience prize at a film and history festival in Romania. She is currently developing a book and an educational initiative based on the film. For more information on My Underground Mother and for upcoming screenings, https://myundergroundmother.com/. Transcript: [00:00:00:06 - 00:00:10:00] Shalom. Before you watch this episode of To Be Continued..., I would like to warn you that there are graphic descriptions of sexual violence and rape. [00:00:11:09 - 00:00:26:04] This episode is generously sponsored by Sheryl Hoffman in memory of her grandmothers, Roma Tuchand and Sarah Medwied, both of them of blessed memory, whose strength and perseverance during the Holocaust helped save Sheryl's mom and dad. [00:00:28:06 - 00:00:34:03] "You think you know your mother, until you don't," says filmmaker Marisa Fox. [00:00:35:16 - 00:00:44:14] Tamar was a New York doctor's wife who claimed she fled her native Poland on the cusp of World War II, and was never a Holocaust victim. [00:00:46:07 - 00:00:52:15] Twenty years after her death, Fox, a journalist and mother, learned that Tamar had a secret identity [00:00:53:15 - 00:00:57:18] and began chasing down leads that would take her around the globe. [00:00:58:24 - 00:01:16:04] Dogged research, extraordinary archival imagery and staggeringly candid interviews revealed the portrait of a woman who dared to be the hero of her own story, ultimately reinventing herself as a matriarch in America. [00:01:18:00 - 00:01:26:26] It is a real-life story of a daughter coming to terms with a mother who went to extraordinary lengths not to be defined by trauma. [00:01:28:20 - 00:01:40:20] Welcome to our podcast, To Be Continued... Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors, where we explore the intersections of memory, identity and resilience. [00:01:41:24 - 00:02:02:27] Our goal, to lift up the experiences of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and to ask, "How did those memories form you? How did resilience create you as the person you are today? And what is the legacy that you will leave to those who come after you?" I am your host, Rabbi Jeff Salkin. [00:02:05:01 - 00:02:17:20] Our guest today is Marisa Fox, an award-winning journalist and a first-time film director who has been a producer at FX, Channel 13, WNET, VH1 and MTV. [00:02:19:10 - 00:02:28:09] As a correspondent for Haaretz, New York Newsday, New York, and a contributor to The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, CNN, Forward and The New York Times, [00:02:29:22 - 00:02:38:17] her work has explored issues including gender, genocide, sexual violence, extremism and Holocaust history. [00:02:40:08 - 00:02:52:29] Marisa is the writer, director and producer of My Underground Mother, her debut documentary, which has earned numerous awards and accolades on the International Film Festival cir
- Sep 8, 202649 min
Daniel Rachel: How Do We Confront the Hatred in Rock Music?
In this episode, TO BE CONTINUED... steps outside its usual format for a podcast exchange with Martini Judaism, also hosted by Rabbi Jeff Salkin. He speaks with author Daniel Rachel about This Ain't Rock 'n' Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika and the Third Reich, a history of something that has been hiding in plain sight for more than 60 years. The conversation runs from the Beatles and John Lennon's private Nazi memorabilia collection, through David Bowie's years-long obsession with the Aryan ideal and Eric Clapton's admiration for Enoch Powell, to the punk scene's casual use of Holocaust imagery — the Sex Pistols' "Belsen Was a Gas," and Joy Division taking their name from the women forced into brothels in the camps. Rachel and Salkin also work through the paradox of Jewish musicians, from the Ramones to Blondie to Kiss, using the same symbols, and consider how gaps in Holocaust education on both sides of the Atlantic help explain it. They turn to Roger Waters, Michael Jackson, and Kanye West, and ask why it took governments rather than rock fans to finally draw a line. Rachel's answer to the silence is unsparing and includes himself: "I think we're all complicit." Daniel Rachel was born in Birmingham, England and raised in a progressive Jewish household. He wrote his first song when he was sixteen and was the lead-singer of Rachels Basement, which he formed in his early twenties. He released two solo albums in 2001 and 2006. Daniel is also an award-winning and bestselling author. Isle of Noise: Conversations with Great British Songwriters was his first book. His latest book, published in early 2026, This Ain’t Rock ‘n’ Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika and the Third Reich, has received rave reviews and standing room only appearances. Daniel co-authored several other books as well. He has served as a consultant and appeared in several cultural documentaries. Daniel lives in north London with his partner and three children. Transcript: Today’s episode is a little different—and there’s a reason. TO BE CONTINUED... is participating in a podcast exchange with Martini Judaism, which is another podcast I host. Podcast exchanges are a popular way for podcasts with related subject matter to introduce their audiences to conversations they might not otherwise hear. Most episodes of TO BE CONTINUED... explore the Holocaust through the experiences of 2G and 3G descendants and how that history has shaped their lives. But countering Holocaust denial and distortion, and the trivialization of Nazi history, that's also an important part of our mission. So today, we’re stepping outside our usual format to explore how Holocaust history and Nazi imagery have entered popular culture. Daniel Rachel is the author of This Ain’t Rock ’n’ Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika and the Third Reich. And he asks a rather provocative question: How do we confront hatred in rock music? This is a different subject for us, but it is really very much part of the conversation we’re continuing here on TO BE CONTINUED.. And we return in October with a new episode featuring award-winning journalist and filmmaker Marisa Fox, a 2G descendant and the writer, producer, and editor of her new film, My Underground Mother. The Stones put it this way. "It's only rock and roll, but I like it." Oh, I really like it. You know that. If you've been reading my column for any length of time, you know that I am a serious rock and roll fan. Oh, it starts with the Beatles, it goes into the Stones, David Bowie, The Who, Dylan, obviously, always Dylan. You know, when I was a grown up, I learned how to interpret sacred texts, but when I was a teenager, the only sacred texts I was interpreting were Dylan lyrics. It's only rock and roll, but sometimes I don't like it. From the Religion News Service, this is Martini Judaism. For those who want to be shaken and stirred, and I'm Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin. And today we're doing something a little different. We're not going to be talking about Torah, or theology, or Israel, or even the crisis of American Jewish identity. Though I promise you that these topics will sort of show up in some form or another. They always do. Today we're talking about rock and roll. Specifically, we're talking about a remarkable, disturbing, and overdue book called "This Ain't Rock and Roll, Pop Music, the Swastika, and the Third Reich” by Daniel Rachel. The book documents something that's been hiding in plain sight for more than 60 years. Here's the quote: "For over 75 years, musicians have been drawn to the language and provocative imagery of Nazism, fascinated by its power, menace, and underlying sexuality. They have flirted with the theatrical spectacle of the Third Reich, displayed the swastika, flaunted memorabilia, wore Nazi uniforms, and marveled at the grandiose rallies of 1930s Germany." Let me put it to you this way. Decades ago, the American folk sing
- Aug 10, 202646 min
Judy Batalion: Trauma Moves Through Generations — But So Does Strength
This episode is generously sponsored by Gail and Dennis Roth in loving memory of Gail's parents, Frances and Meyer Weisman who were both born in Czechoslovakia. Frances survived both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and Meyer endured various hard labor camps. They were thrilled to arrive in New York in 1949, to begin a new life together. New York Times bestselling author Judy Batalion grew up in a house in Montreal that was filled to the brim: her mother and grandmother had suffered from compulsive hoarding. It could in part be attributed to years they spent as nomads, fleeing from the impact of the Holocaust. "One of the metaphoric poetic real reasons that I instinctively feel with my mother was that her stuff was security. It was safety. She literally formed barricades around her with stuff. She was holding on to something." In this conversation with Rabbi Jeff Salkin, Judy Batalion pieces together what she knows of her grandparents' survival and her mother's childhood. She also discusses her own lifelong anxiety along with her interpretation of her father's belief that anxious people were the ones who survived the Holocaust. As a young adult, Judy left home for Harvard and then London, deliberately escaping that landscape and building the opposite kind of life: minimalist, orderly, white-walled. She became an art historian working in the British museum world, as far from her family's history as she could get. Years later, she found herself writing three books about exactly the world she had left behind. Judy Batalion is a New York Times bestselling author of award-winning nonfiction and fiction. She is the author of The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos, for which Steven Spielberg's Amblin Partners has optioned the film rights, and White Walls: A Memoir About Motherhood, Daughterhood, and the Mess in Between, optioned by Warner Brothers for development as a television series titled Cluttered. Her latest novel, The Last Woman of Warsaw, is a story of friendship, love, and home set in Warsaw on the eve of World War II. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Vogue, among other publications. She earned her bachelor's degree at Harvard and a PhD from the University of London, and has worked as a museum curator, a university lecturer, and a stand-up comic. The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, she grew up in Montreal and now lives in New York City with her husband and three children. Transcript: [00:00:08:02 - 00:00:19:11] This episode of To Be Continued is sponsored by Gail and Dennis Roth in loving memory of Gail's parents, Frances and Meyer Weisman who were both born in Czechoslovakia. [00:00:20:21 - 00:00:41:11] Frances survived both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and Meyer endured various hard labor camps. They were thrilled to arrive in New York in 1949, to begin a new life together. Welcome to To Be Continued..., Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors. I'm your host, Rabbi Jeff Salkin. [00:00:43:05 - 00:00:51:08] In this podcast, we explore how the Holocaust continues to shape the lives of the children and grandchildren of survivors. [00:00:52:26 - 00:01:10:03] Our conversations begin with stories of survival, but beyond those experiences to examine the profound impact the Holocaust has had on the generations that followed, their identities, their relationships, their choices, and their sense of responsibility. [00:01:11:17 - 00:01:16:26] Jewish tradition teaches us the importance of l'dor v'dor, from generation to generation. [00:01:18:10 - 00:01:26:20] Each generation receives a story, but also has the opportunity to interpret it and to give that story new meaning. [00:01:28:15 - 00:01:38:20] Through conversations with descendants of survivors, we explore the intersections of memory, identity, and resilience, asking how did those memories form you? [00:01:39:28 - 00:01:46:29] How did resilience shape the person you became, and what legacy will you leave for those who come after you? [00:01:48:11 - 00:01:56:02] My guest today is Judy Batalion, a New York Times bestselling author of award-winning nonfiction and fiction. [00:01:57:11 - 00:02:03:04] Her work has brought powerful stories of Jewish courage and resistance to readers around the world. [00:02:04:05 - 00:02:26:03] Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and Vogue, among other publications. She earned her bachelor's degree at Harvard and a PhD from the University of London, and she has worked as a museum curator and university lecturer. Today, Judy lives in New York City with her husband and her three children. [00:02:27:25 - 00:02:42:10] As the granddaughter of Holocaust survivor
- Jul 6, 202642 min
Dara Bratt and Michelle Rose: Tattoos, The Evolution of Holocaust Remembrance
The real question isn't simply whether Judaism prohibits tattoos. We know the Torah speaks against them. Holocaust survivors imprisoned at Auschwitz II-Birkenau did not choose their tattooed numbers — they were an act of degradation and dehumanization. But what happens when descendants of Holocaust survivors choose to use that traditionally prohibited practice as an act of sacred remembrance? Is this a break with tradition, or an attempt to fulfill one of Judaism's greatest commandments: Zachor— to remember? In this powerful episode of TO BE CONTINUED..., Rabbi Jeff Salkin sits down with award-winning documentary filmmaker Dara Bratt and third-generation Holocaust descendant Michelle Ekstein Rose to explore one of the most unexpected and moving expressions of Holocaust remembrance today: commemorative tattoos. Dara shares the story behind her acclaimed short documentary Inked: Our Stories Remarked, which follows children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors who have chosen to etch their family's Holocaust legacy onto their bodies. Michelle opens up with her grandmother Anita Ekstein's extraordinary story of survival in Nazi-occupied Poland, and the deeply personal tattoos she carries in her grandmother's and her great-grandfather's honor. Together, they challenge us to ask what it truly means to remember, to reclaim, and to pass a legacy forward, and whether something some consider religiously prohibitive can become an act of devotion. This is an episode about "ink", identity, resilience, and the evolving ways each generation carries the legacy of the Holocaust. It will spur conversations; it will stay with you long after you listen. Michelle Rose is a third-generation descendant of four Holocaust survivors and a passionate community activist dedicated to Holocaust remembrance, education, and justice. Raised with the stories of her grandparents woven into the fabric of her identity, Michelle was particularly shaped by her grandmother Anita Ekstein, a prominent Holocaust educator and survivor who escaped Nazi persecution through extraordinary acts of courage and kindness from righteous gentiles. Michelle lives in Toronto, Canada with her husband and two young sons. Dara Bratt is an award-winning director and film producer whose work has screened at prestigious festivals around the world, including Tribeca, SXSW, and the Abu Dhabi International Film Festival. Known for shining a light on extraordinary and unconventional stories, Dara was drawn to the powerful and little-known phenomenon of Holocaust commemorative tattoos after a conversation with a professor researching how tattoos can heal trauma. That curiosity led her to create Inked: Our Stories Remarked, a short documentary exploring how grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are etching family memory onto their bodies as acts of identity, resilience, and education. In June 2024, the film took first place in the Claims Conference Emerging Filmmaker Contest, chosen from 35 submissions across nine countries. Since its 2025 premiere, the film has screened at festivals and cultural institutions across North America. The film has received Best Female Director at the Istanbul Women Film Awards, Best Short Documentary at the New York Women Film Festival, and Best Historical Documentary at the Milan Indie Film Festival. It has also been featured in university classrooms at Loyola University New Orleans and Tulane University, where Bratt has guest lectured on Holocaust memory, identity, documentary storytelling, and intergenerational legacy. TRANSCRIPT: This episode is generously sponsored by Susan Singer in honor of her parents Yolanda and Siegmund Joseph, courageous Holocaust survivors from Czechoslovakia, who kept the memory of their lost families alive. You've heard it your whole life. If you get a tattoo, you can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery. That might, or it might not, be true. Yes, of course, the prohibition is real. It's right there in the Book of Leviticus. It's unambiguous to not cut your bodies for the dead, or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord. But the cemetery thing -- in all likelihood -- it is probably a piece of communal folklore. It was a cautionary tale, most likely. The Jewish authorities invented it in order to keep Jews away from the needle and the ink. And yet, it hasn't exactly worked as a deterrent. It did for a while, but not in our time, tattoos have become something we could not have imagined a generation ago. The tattoo has become a fashion statement. and makes the body a canvas for identity. But you see, for Holocaust survivors... tattoos were not a choice. They were a mark of degradation. People decided that Jews were not people, but rather commodities, and they etched those numbers into their flesh. But for some of their children and grandchildren, that same act, marking the body, has become something almost unrecognizable. It has become a way to remember, a way to reclaim,
- Jun 8, 202648 min
Charlie Scheidt & Kat Rohrer: Holocaust Descendants on Different Sides of History
What happens when the son of a Holocaust survivor meets the granddaughter of a Nazi officer? In this powerful episode of TO BE CONTINUED... Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors, host Rabbi Jeff Salkin sits down with Charlie Scheidt and Kat Rohrer, co-authors of Inheritance: Love, Loss, and the Legacy of the Holocaust. Charlie grew up in a German Jewish household on New York's Upper West Side, surrounded by family members who had fled Nazi Germany, and a silence about the past that was deafening. When his mother died in 1988, she left behind an armoire filled with nearly a thousand documents: letters, visas, identity papers, and more. It would take Charlie twenty years before he could bring himself to open them. Kat is an award-winning Austrian filmmaker and the granddaughter of a devoted Nazi officer. Haunted by her family's role in one of history's darkest chapters, she had spent years grappling with what it means to carry that legacy. When they met, an extraordinary partnership was born. Over fifteen years, four trips to Europe, and hundreds of conversations, they pieced together a story of loss, memory, and unexpected connection. Together, they reflect on the silence that shaped them, the documents and discoveries that changed them, and why they believe that breaking that silence is the only way to ensure the oppressors don't own the story. TRANSCRIPT: This episode of our podcast is generously sponsored by Irene and David Beyth, in memory of David's parents, Hannah and Werner Beyth, who were both fortunate to escape Nazi Germany before the war. Let us start with a German lesson. The word is Erbe. It means both inheritance and legacy. Today's guests have spent more than a decade sitting with that word. One of them grew up in a German Jewish household on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, surrounded by relatives who had fled Nazi Germany in a family where the unspoken motto was "Forward, never back." The other grew up in postwar Austria. The granddaughter of a man who volunteered for the Wehrmacht, Hitler's united armed forces of Nazi Germany, and a family that kept its silence about what that meant and why. And yet remarkably these two people found each other. They traveled together through Germany, France, Austria, and the Netherlands on a joint journey of discovery and empathy. The result is a book called Inheritance - Love, Loss, and the Legacy of the Holocaust, a memoir unlike almost any other in the crowded literature of Holocaust memory because it is written across the deepest moral divide of the 20th century, between the descendants of victims and the descendants of perpetrators. Welcome to this podcast, To Be Continued... Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors, where we explore the intersections of memory, identity, and resilience. Our goal is to lift up the experiences of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and to ask how did those memories form you? How did resilience create you as the person you are today? And what is the legacy that you will leave to those who come after you? I am your host Rabbi Jeff Salkin, and our guests are Charlie Scheidt, born in New York City, the son of German Jewish refugees. His father Bruno fled Frankfurt in 1933. His mother Sous followed, as did many other close family members. But unfortunately others did not and became trapped in the Nazi Weis in Germany, Holland, and France. And when Charlie's mother died in 1988, she left behind an armoire containing nearly a thousand documents, letters, visas, identity papers, a baby's autopsy report...that Charlie could not bring himself to absorb and deal with for 20 years. Kat Rohrer is an award-winning Austrian filmmaker whose films include "Back to the Fatherland," a documentary about Israelis living in Germany. Her maternal grandfather was a devout Nazi officer, a true believer who died fighting in Yugoslavia before her mother was born. Her family, her mother, her grandmother, her great aunt -- who by the way married a Jew and escaped to Australia -- did not speak of him. Charlie and Kat met almost by accident when Kat was filming the 75th anniversary of Charlie's company, Roland Foods. He noticed she spoke German. A few months later he asked if she might help him translate some papers. She said yes because, as she told him, she had a personal interest in that period of history. It would be some time before he understood what that meant. Eventually she sent him an email. It was time she said that he knew her story. She told him that she had been haunted all her life by the same patch of ash that haunted his family. What followed was 15 years of research, four trips to Europe, hundreds of conversations with strangers who turned out to be guardia
- May 11, 202635 min
Nick Winton: Inheriting Moral Clarity
What does it mean to grow up in the shadow of an extraordinary father — one whose secret acts of heroism saved 669 mostly Jewish children from the Holocaust, yet never spoke a word of it to his family? In this episode of TO BE CONTINUED... host Rabbi Jeff Salkin sits down with Nick Winton, son of Sir Nicholas Winton, the quiet, unassuming British stockbroker who, beginning in late 1938, organized the rescue of hundreds of mostly Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. Over the course of several months, he arranged eight transports from Prague to Great Britain — until September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, the borders closed, and a ninth train carrying 250 children never left the station. The story remained hidden for 50 years, until Nick's mother discovered a dusty scrapbook in 1988. Nick reflects on learning of his father's legacy as an adult, the weight of carrying such an inheritance, and the question at the heart of this conversation: if second-generation survivor descendants inherit trauma, do children of rescuers inherit moral responsibility? Nick Winton grew up near Maidenhead, England. He graduated from Imperial College Business School, London. After brain tumor surgery and with a five-year prognosis, Nick earned his MBA. Nick Winton is now an international speaker, storyteller, and company adviser. His stories are inspired by his father. Nick now channels his legacy and personal stories into powerful speeches that inspire change. TRANSCRIPT: This episode is generously sponsored by Karen and George Goldberg in honor of their children and three grandchildren who are all descendants of Karen's mom, Ilona Medwied, a Holocaust survivor and the inspiration for this podcast. Also in honor of George's dad, Staff Sergeant Frederick Goldberg of the U.S. Army Air Force, who flew 35 missions as a B-17 side gunner, fighting the Nazis. We often speak about children of Holocaust survivors inheriting trauma. As our first guest, Elizabeth Rosner, had put it, "We are experiencing post-traumatic stress as if we too went through those experiences. We know that we didn't. I know that I was not there physically. I wasn't even a witness to their experience.” But in this podcast, we are meeting a different kind of a child, a different kind of second-generation descendant. This is a story you n Welcome to this podcast, To Be Continued... Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors, where we explore the intersections of memory, identity, and resilience. Our goal, to lift up the experiences of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and to ask, How did those memories form you? How did resilience create you as the person you are today? And what is the legacy that you will leave to those who come after you? I'm your host, Rabbi Jeff Salkin. You are about to meet a man named Nick Winton. In the Jewish tradition, to bear someone's name is to perpetuate their memory, to make sure that the good deeds that they did will survive them. Nick Winton bears the name of his father, Sir Nicholas Winton. It starts in December 1938 with a man named Martin Blake, who was a friend of Nicholas Winton, and who was an instructional master at the Westminster School in London. Nicholas was about to take a ski vacation to Switzerland, and his friend invited him instead to visit him in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where he had traveled in his capacity as an associate of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia. This committee had been established in October 1938 to provide assistance for refugees created by the German annexation of the Sudeten regions of Czechoslovakia under the terms of the Munich Pact. Convinced that a European war was imminent, Winton decided to go to Prague. What happened? Winton immediately established a children's section, and using the name of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, initially without authorization, he began taking applications from parents at his hotel in Prague. Soon, thousands of parents lined up outside of Winton's children's sections office, seeking a safe haven for their children. Ultimately, Nicholas Winton saved the lives of 669 children, most of them Jewish, who have multiplied to more than 6,000 survivor descendants. What a story. And you can watch this story, as I recently did in the movie One Life, that stars Anthony Hopkins, which is a very powerful film. But there is so much more that you should hear from Nicholas's son, Nick Winton. And true to this podcast, we will explore the question of, if many second- and third-generation survivor descendants do inherit trauma, do children of rescuers inherit moral responsibility? That is our question, among others, for Nick Winton, the son of the man dubbed Britain’s Schindler. Nick Winton grew up near Maidenhead, England, one of three children born to
- Apr 6, 202636 min
Leora Einleger: Granddaughter of Dr. Ruth, on Resilience and Connection
A deeply personal conversation with Leora Einleger, granddaughter of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, groundbreaking sex therapist and Holocaust survivor is featured on this episode of TO BE CONTINUED...Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors. The conversation reveals how Dr. Ruth’s experiences of profound loss fueled a lifelong commitment to joy, human connection, and combating loneliness and antisemitism, offering a powerful meditation on how trauma can be transformed into meaning, and how legacy lives on through the choices and voices of future generations. This episode is generously sponsored by Karen and George Goldberg, in honor of their children and three grandchildren, who are all descendants of Karen's mom, Ilona Medwied, a Holocaust survivor and the inspiration for this podcast; and also in honor of George's dad, Staff Sergeant Frederick Goldberg of the US Army Air Force, who flew 35 missions as a B-17 side gunner, fighting the Nazis. TRANSCRIPT: I once ran into her in the gift shop at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. She was very easy to spot—a diminutive woman who spoke with a German accent anyone would recognize. I introduced myself. She introduced herself. We exchanged pleasantries. It was all lovely. Then, a few years later, I was in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel, and I saw her again. I reintroduced myself. Whether or not she really remembered me, she acted as if she did. Then she asked me a few questions about how I was doing. For some reason, I told her that I had become newly single again—and then her eyes sparkled. I could tell that she would have given me advice if only I had asked for it. I am talking about the late Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Welcome to our podcast, To Be Continued… Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors, where we explore the intersections of memory, identity, and resilience. Our goal is to lift up the experiences of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and to ask: How do those memories shape you? How did resilience create you as the person you are today? What is the legacy that you will leave to those who come after you? Before we begin, this episode is generously sponsored by Karen and George Goldberg, in honor of their children and three grandchildren, all descendants of Karen’s mother, Ilona Medwied, a Holocaust survivor and the inspiration for this podcast. Also in honor of George’s father, Staff Sergeant Frederick Goldberg of the U.S. Army Air Force, who flew 35 missions as a B-17 side gunner fighting the Nazis. I’m your host, Rabbi Jeff Salkin. Because this episode is released in early April—close to Yom HaShoah—its relevance is particularly poignant. Before Dr. Ruth became a cultural icon, she was Karola Ruth Siegel, a Jewish child in Nazi Germany who escaped on the Kindertransport, a rescue effort that saved thousands of Jewish children from Nazi Europe. She lost her parents in the Holocaust and grew up as an orphan in Switzerland. Ruth would go on to become an Israeli soldier. She would come to the United States, earn a doctorate, and eventually become one of the world’s most recognizable and authoritative voices speaking openly about sex, relationships, and human intimacy. Today’s guest is Leora Einleger, the proud granddaughter of Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer—may her memory be a blessing—whom she calls Omi, a self-described orphan of the Holocaust. Leora had a rare blessing: she had Omi in her life for 28 years. Omi’s story of survival, resilience, and joy profoundly shaped Leora’s career and personal pursuits. She is a New York attorney specializing in commercial litigation and white-collar defense and investigations. In Omi’s memory, she maintains an active pro bono practice focused on reproductive rights and combating antisemitism. Leora represents the third generation—carrying forward both the memory of loss and the extraordinary resilience that followed. Before we go further, this is Women’s History Month. When we think of history-making women, Dr. Ruth is near the top of my list—not only because she carried grief, displacement, and survival, but because she refused to let loss define her. She used her life to help others live more fully and honestly. Leora, welcome. It’s great to have you with us. Rabbi Jeff Salkin: Thanks so much for having me. Rabbi Jeff Salkin: Let’s start simply—what was it like growing up with Dr. Ruth? Leora: It was the best experience ever. I had the best grandmother in the world. She was way cooler than I’ll ever be—went out more than I did, had more friends than I did—and she was truly one of my closest friends. I was lucky to grow up near her. I saw her at least once a week, and when I got older, we spoke almost every day. People always ask if she talked to me about sex—not really. She kept her home life and work life sep
- Mar 10, 202645 min
Dina Kraft: The Legacy of Anne Frank’s Best Friend
Anne Frank's best friend survived to tell the story Anne could not. Journalist Dina Kraft and Hannah Pick-Goslar’s daughter, Ruthie Meir, reflect on friendship, survival, and the weight of carrying memory forward in this episode of TO BE CONTINUED... They discuss what was lost, and what was rebuilt through resilience, testimony, and hope across generations. TRANSCRIPT: This episode of TO BE CONTINUED… is sponsored by Vicki Robinson and Michael Robinson in honor of Morton Kess, who helped liberate the concentration camps in Germany, and in memory of all those who died at the hands of the Nazis, and by Carl Fremont and Joanne Fremont Burns in loving memory and in honor of their parents. Ted Fremont, born official Fischel Friedman, who was a Holocaust survivor from Vilna, Poland. Ted lost his mother and seven siblings. He married Helen Garfield from the Bronx, and together they built a welcoming and loving home. Both Ted and Helen were beacons of hope and inspiration. Today's conversation is about friendship, survival, and what it means to carry memory forward, not as history alone, but as life. When we think of Anne Frank, we often think of her diary, her hiding, her tragic death. But Anne Frank was also a girl with friends… friends who loved her and who laughed with her, and who survived her. One of those friends was Hannah Pick Goslar. Hannah survived Bergen-Belsen, where she and Anne had a final heartbreaking encounter through a fence. Hannah lived. Anne did not. And that single fact shaped Hannah's life and the lives of her children and grandchildren, to be continued for generations. Welcome to this podcast, TO BE CONTINUED…Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors, where we explore the intersections of memory, identity, and resilience. Our goal is to lift up the experiences of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, and to ask, How did those memories form you? How did resilience create you as the person you are today? And what is the legacy that you will leave to those who come after you? I'm your host, Rabbi Jeff Salkin. Today we're joined by Dina Kraft, a journalist and veteran correspondent who has written for the Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and the JTA, among others. Dina is the co-author of My Friend Anne Frank, who writes not only as a storyteller, but as a third-generation descendant of a Holocaust survivor. We also welcome Ruthie Meir, Hannah Pick Goslar's daughter, a second-generation descendant who grew up in the shadow and the strength of her mother's experience. Ruthie was her mother's right-hand assistant before and during the writing of the Anne Frank book. All of them live in Israel. And that matters. Because this is not only a story about what was lost, but about what was rebuilt. It's about how trauma travels through generations, yes, but also how resilience makes that same journey. How survivor's guilt lives alongside gratitude. How memory gives birth to responsibility. And how Jewish life continues publicly and unapologetically after catastrophe. This is a conversation about intergenerational trauma, but it's also about intergenerational strength. It's about the burden of telling the story, and it's also about the moral courage that we need to carry that story forward with honesty, compassion, and humanity. Welcome, friends. It's great to have you on To Be Continued. Ruthie, your mother, Hannah Pick Goslar, wrote in her book, My Friend Anne Frank, that “Anne Frank had become a symbol in many ways of all the hope and promise that was lost to hatred and murder.” I would certainly agree that she has become the overriding symbol of the Holocaust…”Talking about her story, our story would later become a thread that bound me to her and kept our friendship alive long after she was gone.” So tell us a short version of your mother's story, from her birth in Berlin to the Netherlands, how she met Anne Frank and their last meeting in Bergen-Belsen. My mother was born in 1928 in Berlin. She had a lovely childhood. And her father was a very high official in the German Otto Braun government. In 1933, when Hitler came into power, her father understood immediately that he cannot stay anymore in Germany because he also wrote against Hitler, and he went to England. So, we didn't go and stay in England, and he went to Holland. And my mother had to go to school. And so on the first day they would go to the grocery. Her mother sees another woman that comes from Germany. Of course they started to talk and they came fro
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About TO BE CONTINUED...Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors
Welcome to TO BE CONTINUED… Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors, where we explore the intersections of memory, identity, and resilience. Our goal is to lift up the experiences of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, and to ask how survivors’ memories shaped their lives. How did resilience help form who they are today? And what legacy will they leave for the generations that follow? Within the next 10 years, most survivors will be gone. As the world loses these witnesses of the truths of the Holocaust, second- and third-generation voices are more important than ever.
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