As the eldest daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Barbara recounts the heart-wrenching and extraordinary story of survival of her late mother, Regina Kleinberg-Cieply. Regina was just twelve years old when she escaped the Warsaw ghetto. She found refuge with total strangers, assuming various non-Jewish identities in order to survive. Using excerpts of her mother’s testimonial videos and family photos, Barbara encourages students to forge connections between past atrocities like the Holocaust and contemporary instances of hate and intolerance.

Using her mother’s vivid video testimonials of her experiences during the Holocaust and photos of artifacts she kept from that time, Naomi Tencer shares the story of Sonia Smolnik Tencer. Sonia was a young newlywed in Vilna, Poland, when the Nazis invaded in 1939. Along with her family, she was forced to live in unbearable conditions in the Vilna ghetto, and she later endured four labour/death camps and a death march. Sonia miraculously survived and immigrated to Canada with her concentration camp uniform in a bag and painful memories to share with the world. Growing up as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Naomi always felt the weight of her mother’s trauma. She made it her mission to share Sonia’s story, in order to teach future generations about the suffering and pain that continue to happen today.