"Summertime" - An Interview with 3X Emmy Winner Dana Arschin on Holocaust Education and Storytelling - Shebrew in the City

Episode Transcript
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Nicole Kelly (00:01):
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(00:29):
Hi, I'm Nicole Kelly and this isShebrew in the City, and today
I'm sitting down with DanaArschin, who has some really
interesting information andpersonal stories to share, which
I'm really excited to talk toher about.
How are you today, Dana?

Dana Arschin (00:44):
I am good, Nicole.
Thank you so much for yourinterest in me and the work that
I do and for having me today.
I really appreciate it.

Of course.
It's so important and this isactually the first podcast where
we're really gonna be talkingabout the Holocaust, which is
something that I have mentionedto you and I'm sure will come up
a million times throughout myshow that I'm super passionate
about Holocaust education and Ithink you know, as we are losing
survivors and statistics likeyou know, one in five children

(01:11):
don't think that the Holocausthappened.
Things like that that are goingwrong.
It's just so important.
So I'm really excited to talkto you about your family story
and about your work and yourhistory as a journalist.

Thank you.
Thank you so much.

So I always like to kind of start off by talking
a little bit about yourbackground, so people kind of
know who you are, where you'refrom.
So where are you originallyfrom?

So I was born in Queens, in Bayside, Queens.
I lived there until I was three.
My parents lived in an areathat was like all Jews living in
condos.
Both of my parents were fromQueens also.
My mom was originally born inthe Bronx, my dad in Brooklyn,
and they both went to highschool in Queens.
So I was in Bayside till I wasthree and then we moved to

(01:53):
Jericho, Long Island, where Igrew up and I spent my whole
life in Jericho.
I went to college at theUniversity of Delaware.
I came back to Long Island forgraduate school and then I lived
in the city for the next decadeplus and then I came back to
Long Island.
And right now I live in PortWashington with my husband and

(02:15):
my two daughters.

It's so funny that you say that your mom was born
in the Bronx and lived in Queens.
My dad was born in the Bronxand ended up living in Queens,
but they moved out to Californiawhen he was, I think, six years
old my dad's side of the family.
They were from the South Bronxand they were very New York.

Were his parents immigrants.

No, they were first generation.
Their parents were the ones whoimmigrated.
So my last direct relative oneither side to come to America
was my mom's grandmother, whocame in 1920.
And I actually have her EllisIsland manifest on the wall
behind me.

Oh amazing.

I love that you're so into family history oh yeah,
one of the guests that I'mhoping to have is a genealogist.
I'm very into family historyand someday I want to create
this cohesive family tree artpiece that includes people's
Hebrew names, and I need a bigwall for that.
So so so we grew up for themost part in Long Island.
Was Judaism a big part of yourupbringing?

(03:09):
Were you a member of asynagogue?
Did you have a bat mitzvah?

Yeah, so I grew up in an area that was
predominantly Jewish secularJewish and it's funny, my
parents are very worldly.
They always had a lot ofnon-Jewish friends and always
made sure that we went out forAfghani food and Thai food and
Korean food and that wasimportant to them.
But after my mom's experience,you know, growing up without any

(03:34):
grandparents because they weremurdered in the Holocaust and
without cousins, and she justnever wanted to feel like that
outsider who didn't belong,which is how her father and my
poppy, you know, had lived inPoland and that's what life was
like for him even before the war.
So it was important for herthat I, that her kids, felt like
they were part of a communitywhere they were accepted.

(03:54):
I understood because you know,people always say to me like, oh
, didn't you want some diversity?
So that was just my mom'sperspective and you know, a
child of a Holocaust survivorjust has very different
perspectives than pretty muchanyone else.
The way they grew up is sounique.

Yeah, one of the other things that I'm super
interested in as well isgenerational trauma, especially
within the.
Jewish community.
So you're definitely.
That's exactly what that is.

Exactly so we grew up there.
She just really wanted us andit had an amazing school
district.
It's funny I was like morereligious than most of my
friends, but we were notreligious.
We didn't observe Shabbat, butwe would walk to and from
synagogue on the high holidaysyou know, not use electricity
and we did keep a semi-kosherhouse.

(04:41):
We had separate plates andsilverware for meat and dairy,
but my mom would bring innon-kosher house.
We had separate plates andsilverware for meat and dairy,
but my mom would bring innon-kosher Chinese food and
shrimp and we never had pork,but she would bring in shrimp
and she'd put it on paper platesas to not un-kosher our
silverware.
And you know what?
Growing up I never reallyunderstood it and now I do.

(05:02):
That's kind of the beauty ofJudaism you do what works for
you and that was the best thatshe could do.
And clearly it worked, becausehere I am as a very proud Jew
and Holocaust storyteller, soshe definitely did something
right.
But yeah, we grew uptraditional, did you?

have.
Formed conservative, I'd say,yeah, I got that.
That's actually like a commonthing I hear from a lot of
people Did you have a batmitzvah?

I did.
I had a bat mitzvah and mysister had a bat mitzvah.
She chose to not have the hugeparty and to do a bat mitzvah
tour in Israel instead, whichwas incredible.
So I had, like, the big partythat everyone has, and she had a
very small party, and, and shehad a very small party and we
went to.

Israel and that was so memorable.
I know a couple of peoplewho've done that and I've only
heard good things, so it'ssomething that maybe if my
daughter is interested in doingthat, but I have a feeling
she'll also want a big partybecause she likes it.
You know what?

When you're that age it's very hard to not opt to
do what everyone's doing.
But looking back now, I reallypray that my children go for
know, go for the Babbits fromIsrael, because it was so I was
in fourth grade and I rememberit so clearly.

That's so cool, so kind of just jumping into your
expertise and your family story.
I know you recently lost yourgrandfather, who you called your
poppy, and I'm so sorry aboutthat.
Thank you, he was.
He was almost 102.
Is that correct?

Yeah, he would have turned 102, march 8th
coming up, so just a few monthsshy.

My grandfather passed away when he was 94, and
it really doesn't matter howmuch time you have with them,
it's still like.
I think it's sometimes harderin a different way because
they've always been there andthey're so old that you know
it's a different kind of loss.

And I hate when people say, oh, but he was 102.
Like that's amazing, you stillnever get to see that person
again, it doesn't matter how oldthey are.
But you know, nobody knows.
It's very hard to figure outthe right thing to say.
But age doesn't matter.
And I have to tell you I reallythought this man was going to

(07:03):
live forever.

That's how I felt about my grandfather.

I'm still convinced that there's something
that could have been done tohave saved him and like that's
just who I am Like, I'm alwaysgoing to feel that way.
But like I interviewed 110 yearold Holocaust survivor last
year, who's now 111.
And I was convinced that mypoppy was going to be the next
110 yearold, I wasn't done withhim yet.

No, I definitely get the idea of not done with
him.
I'm sorry about that.
But I do want to honor him bytalking about his story, so I'd
love to hear about his lifebefore the war in Poland, what
happened to him during the warand what he accomplished after
the war.

Yeah, so my papi was born on March 8th 1922, and
he was named after hisgrandfather, who had just passed
away in 1921.
His grandfather was a reallybig deal His name's Natan
Torfstein, and he was the chiefrabbi of Stanisławów.
Hopefully I'm pronouncing itcorrectly.

(08:02):
I'm practicing thepronunciation.
There were two Stanislavovs Onewas in Poland and now is
considered part of the Ukraine,and the other one was closer to
Warsaw.
So he was the chief rabbi ofthis town that was closer to
Warsaw and he was a huge scholar, and so it was so fascinating
to me that my poppy was namedafter him.

(08:25):
My poppy was born.
His Hebrew name was ChaimNewsom.
His Polish name was just NewsomRosenberg Rosenberg with a Z,
yeah, which is later changedwith an S, and he grew up in a
very, very poor home.
But I don't know if that'sbecause they were poor or

(08:47):
because they had 11 children.
Wow, which has to be difficult.
Two of them sadly died beforethe war.
One of them their names wereReuven and Joseph, and one was
run over by a horse and buggy inthe street and the other one
fell out of a crib and bangedhis head and died.

(09:08):
Crazy, right, isn't it wild?
And apparently like thesestories aren't so uncommon for
that time I had my grandmother'ssister.

I mean, they lived in, you know, the Bronx.
She was hit by a truck whileshe was riding a bicycle and
died.
So, these crazy stories of,like, small children and these
terrible accidents and diseasesand things.

Yeah, he remembers walking one of his siblings who
passed away, that they wrappedhim in a talus, which is a
Jewish prayer shawl anyoneunfamiliar wrapped him in a
talus and the whole familywalked through the street
together to the graveyard and tothe cemetery and buried him,
and traditionally I guess you dojust wrap Natalis.

(09:50):
I've learned that recently andthis vision of the family
walking through the streetholding this little boy's body,
natalis, I always think of this.
This was 100 years ago in life.
It's so drastically different.
This was 100 years ago in life.
It's so drastically different.
His father, yonkel Rosenberg,came from a long line of rope
makers making ropes foreverything for horse and buggies

(10:13):
, for different types ofequipment and anything that
needed a rope.
His family made that forgenerations.
And then his mother, sarah, orSarah Torfstein.
She was the daughter of NatanTorfstein, the chief rabbi my
poppy was named after.
They lived in Poltusk, poland,so they had gotten married his

(10:35):
parents and settled in Poltusk,or Poltusk it's about an hour
north of Warsaw and it was avery, very small town but had a
large Jewish community.
They didn't have electricity.
Just two months ago I went tointerview my poppy because I had
more questions and I just foundout.
They had no electricity, thatthey only bathed once a week.

(10:58):
They would walk to the localmikveh or like a Jewish bath
hall, and they would all shower,take their bath in the public
mitzvah once a week beforeShabbat.
I just learned this two monthsago and that's why I'm like I'm
not done with him yet.
I had so many more questions,but it just life was fascinating

(11:20):
, just it's so.
You know, we can't fathomliving like that, and I always
say this, this, but they don'tmake people of that strength
anymore, like none of us wouldbe able to live the way that
they did, um and what else it'sfunny that you say that, because
it was snowing yesterday, twodays ago, and I was pushing a
stroller and I was like this iswhy my relatives left russia

(11:42):
right because they didn't wantto deal with all this.

and I'm you, you know walking around the Upper
West Side with a $2,000 stroller, all covered up, and I'm like
this is terrible.
But you know like that greatgrandmother, who came in 1920,
had stories about being a childduring World War I in Russia and
I think I'm like that's thecraziness, crazy.

People don't, we're a little pampered.
And they lived.
He was in like a wooden bed, hesaid, with straw, with like
five of his brothers in one bed.
It's just unbelievable.
He said there was a lot ofanti-Semitism before the war.
He couldn't even walk on thesidewalk.
His non-Jewish neighbors wouldcall them pids and say walk in
the street, you're not welcomeon the sidewalk.
It's notJewish neighbors wouldcall them pids and say walk in
the street, you're not welcomeon the sidewalk.

(12:26):
It's not to fully generalize.
He did have some neighbors thatwere very kind, who were not
Jewish, but he said for the mostpart anti-Semitism was rampant
before the war.

So how old was he in 1939, when Nazi Germany
invaded Poland?

I believe, he was 18.
Let me do math he was born in1922.

He was 17 or 18 years old.

Yeah, okay 17 or 18.
And you know, thank God he wasable to get his education.
Obviously, education was rippedaway from all his siblings, his
younger siblings.
They came into his city and thefirst thing they did was
rounded up all the men withbeards.
So they rounded up his father,yonkel Rosenberg, and they

(13:11):
remembered him being draggedaway by Nazis, and his father
turned and looked at them withthis terrified face and he's
never been able to get thatimage out of him.
That was the last he ever sawhim and it turns out all those
men had been shot and throwninto a mass grave just for
having a beer.

(13:31):
So from there mygreat-grandmother, sarah, took
her children who were stillliving with her.
Some of the children were alittle older and had moved out
and they walked to Warsaw.
They, because they thought itwas a bigger city, would be
easier for them to hide, andthey walked at night and hid
during the day and it took themdays and days to get to Warsaw.

(13:54):
They finally got there and soonafter they were rounded up so
quickly and they were brought toa ghetto outside of Warsaw not
the Warsaw ghetto.
They lived in that ghetto.
I don't have all the timing onme, but I definitely know the
chronological order of it all.
So they were in the ghetto andthen they were rounding up one

(14:18):
male from each family and mypapi volunteered and he went to
a forced labor camp called Comarwhich was near the German
border.
It was only about 50 workers inthe entire camp and one of the
craziest stories that I'll neverforget, that I always talk
about, was at Comar.

(14:39):
Every few weeks they would havethe prisoners take off their
uniforms and throw them in a bigpot of boiling water to
disinfect themselves and to makesure that the Nazi guards
living among them weren'tinfected with their diseases.
So my papi there had beenassigned to work in the sewers
to clean out the sewer systemand he had found every few weeks

(15:03):
some rotten potatoes and somerotten vegetables that had just
been thrown and found Not much,but every now and then he'd find
some old rotten food down thereand he found a way to tie them
into a very small pocket of hisuniform and every few weeks,
when they had to boil the water,he'd throw in these little
scraps of food that he couldfind and boil them and disinfect

(15:26):
them, and that's how he gotjust a tiny little bit of
nourishment.
And he had been doing this forsome time and eventually he was
caught.
He still never figured out howhe was caught.
He doesn't know if someoneratted him out, he doesn't know
if a piece fell out and Germanguards were saying whose potato
is this?
He has no idea.
But they told him to startdigging his own grave.

(15:47):
And he was digging his owngrave.
Sure that he was going to bekilled.
They had him lay down to see ifhe fit into the grave and they
said you know, it's still notdeep enough and wide enough.
Keep digging.
And he kept digging with a gunheld to his head.
Keep digging.
And he kept digging, with a gunheld to his head and a few feet
from him.
Just a short time later anotherprisoner collapsed, probably

(16:10):
from starvation and dehydration,and they shot that prisoner,
threw him in my poppy's graveand said isn't today your lucky
day, oh my gosh.
And in the USC Shoah Foundationvideo led by Steven Spielberg I
know you're aware of this thathe went around his volunteers
and interviewed tens ofthousands of survivors back in

(16:30):
the 1990s my papi.
In that interview he speaks andhe had the most incredible
memory.
He remembers the German wordsthat were said to him like today
is day and Jew, lay down andsee if you fit.
And he says these words andit's incredible to hear them in
this video.
And the fact that he survived.

(16:51):
That was unbelievable.
But he also lived with guilthis whole life, guilt that this
poor prisoner was shot andkilled, and not him.
It's just what happened.
Each step of the way, everysurvival story of his, it's just
more unbelievable than the next.
I mean, if that man hadn'tcollapsed, I wouldn't be here

(17:13):
today.

It's crazy to think.
I read a lot of books about theHolocaust and a lot of people
have crazy stories of almostlike chance reasons that they're
alive and things like that.

I know what you're saying.
I was just with a Holocaustsurvivor last night.
I lead a group of studentsevery other Thursday and we meet
with survivors, we hear theirstories and they actually act
out the stories in a play at theend of the year.
Oh, wow, and one of thesurvivors was saying she's a
proud Jew but she doesn'tbelieve in God, you know, and,
and how can I blame her?

(17:44):
Right, she was taken to aconcentration camp.
Her family was killed, um, andI said my poppy always did, but
it's, but he served.
You know, it's so easy for thosewho survived.
Um, yeah, I believed in Godbecause God saved me, um, but
what was so interesting is thatwe were trying to reconcile,

(18:05):
like how, how did this happenand how can you still believe in
God?
And like what you just said,that yes, some people were meant
to live, and how I try to thinkof it is look at how Jews in
the world came together afterthe Holocaust.
The same with October 7th.
Came together after theHolocaust, the same with October

(18:28):
7th.
What's so sad is do we needthese catastrophes to keep
happening to bring Jewish pride,you know, to make it stronger,
to bring Jews closer together?
It's such a crazy way to thinkabout it, but that's the only
way that I can justify any ofthis.

No, I completely get that.
I mean we have this terriblejoke that all Jewish holidays
are like they tried to kill us.
They didn't.
We now eat food, but it's kindof like a systematic thing that
throughout the last 5000 yearsthat's just what keeps happening
.
But you know, going liketalking about what's happened
since October 7, I feel like youknow, I've become slightly more
observant.
I know a lot of people havestarted celebrating Shabbat.

(19:02):
They're wearing a lot ofJudaica, they're very proud.
They're possibly scared, butyeah, exactly, she's showing her
necklace.
You can't see if you're notwatching the video.
My Hebrew name Yosefa.
So it's kind of crazy that withthese events and things like
that, you do get the largergroup of people kind of coming
together.

(19:22):
So he's in the labor camp and Iknow he eventually found his
way.
Found his way.
He ended up at auschwitz uh,what was?
what was how?
You know?
Was he directly sent there fromthe labor camp?
Was he sent back to a ghetto?
I know a lot of survivors endedup in a lot of different camps
in a lot of different places.
It wasn't just like you wentone place and you were there the
entire war.

Yeah.
So from my understanding he wastaken direct and I've spent so
much time trying to study hisstory.
It is so complex, but he wastaken directly from Comar to
Birkenau.
In Birkenau for anyoneunfamiliar there's two parts of
Auschwitz.
There's Auschwitz I andAuschwitz II, which is more
commonly known as Birkenau.

(20:03):
Auschwitz I is our beit machtfrei.
That those famous words workwill set you free.
When you see the gates ofAuschwitz, that's Auschwitz I.
Mostly it was non-Jewishpolitical prisoners who were
kept there.
And if you know all this, it'sme just explaining to the
listeners no, no, no, I know allthis.

My guests don't know all this, and that's one of
the reasons we're doing this isbecause a lot of people don't
know this.

Yeah, and Birkenau was mostly, and there was a mix
of all different prisonersthere, but the majority of Jews
were kept in Birkenau.
Birkenau you were selected towork or you were selected to be
gassed.
You were selected to work oryou were selected to be gassed.
My poppy was face to face withthe notorious Nazi doctor,

(20:53):
Joseph Mengele, who was theperson who was in charge of
selections.
He, what did they call him?
The angel of death, the angelof death.
Thank you, he was so handsome.

Yeah, he was a really good looking man, but he
was a terrible human he was thisyoung looking man and he would
smile.

He would call everyone mother, like in this
endearing term, oh hi, mother,go on over here.
And he would be sending them tobe gassed, yeah, for their
death.
Face-to-face with Menga, whochose him for work, and at
Birkenau.
So he spent only three monthsat Birkenau and then he was sent
to an Auschwitz subcamp calledYavorzno and he spent

(21:33):
approximately the rest of he wasin and it was considered
Auschwitz.
Auschwitz had a lot of subcamps, it was maybe about 50 miles
away, and he spent the rest ofhis time in Yavorzno and the
conditions there were.
He watched 18 people get hangedwho had they had built a little
bit of a tunnel underground totry to escape and they were

(21:56):
caught and they hanged them infront of the entire camp to set
an example.
They were Czech prisoners andhe said they were all singing
the Czech national anthem whilethe nooses were around their
neck, right before they werehanged.
I mean, how do you ever get avision like that out of your
head?
And anyone who looked away wasshot.
Yeah, they made you look, youwere forced to look In Javoršno.

(22:21):
He was working in the coal mineand he was sure that he was
going to be killed by the fumesand by breathing in the toxic
coals and he just one daydecided to take his chances.
They weren't as organized there.
Everyone had been assigned towork detail, but it was kind of
like you go there, you go there.

(22:41):
They didn't write names down ofwho was in each group.
Detail, but it was kind of likeyou go there, you go there.
They didn't write names down ofwho was in each group.
And one day he just walked withthe other group and I believe
that was to pave the roads, andI mean just every decision he
made probably saved his life.

I was just reading that, like I was texting you,
but I just read like a 400 pagebook on Auschwitz, this woman
who I know you're familiar with,canada, where they would take
at Berkenau, where they wouldfor those of you that aren't
familiar, this is where theywould take all the stuff that
people left at the train, sobasically people's food and
baggage and stuff.
This woman one day literallyjust went to Canada and they
called it Canada.

What was the reason that they called it
Canada?

I've heard two reasons.
I've heard one because theythought it was kind of this
wealthy nation.
And then there was another onethat had to do with a word,
another language that I can'trecall right now, but she
basically, just one day, waslike I'm going to go over and
work in Canada and the peoplewho worked there got to wear
their own, got to wear normalclothes and they got to keep the
women got to keep their hairand they had food because they

(23:37):
were taking food from theluggage.
So it was a much-.

Was it the tattooist of Auschwitz that you
read?
The Tattooist of.

Auschwitz that you read.
No, no, no, this was like anonfiction book.
It's literally just calledAuschwitz.
I can't remember who the authorwas, but she just went to
Canada and she was like this iswhere I work now.
So it's kind of crazy that evenwithin this kind of very
regimented thing, there werestill stories of people kind of
going and doing that.

Yeah, there's a nonfiction book the Tattooist of
Auschwitz.

It's a true story but you are familiar with it.
Yeah, I was just reading anarticle last night about the
movie that they're making.

There's some controversy.
I thought it was a wonderfulbook, but some people feel that
it didn't make the Nazis lookthat bad because this prisoner
who they profile had it reallygood comparatively.
But I don't find nothing wrongwith that.
That's one person's perspectiveand every perspective is so

(24:31):
different.

I think that's the important thing to remember
when you're talking about theHolocaust, and survivors is it's
.
These are individual people andeverybody who survived survived
because of their specific storyand what happened to them, so
you can't just, you know broadstroke saying, well, this was
everybody's story.
You know people had to dosometimes terrible and crazy

(24:52):
things to be able to make it outof the Holocaust.
So that's why I, like you know,that's why what you do is so
important, which we'll get to ina little bit.
So he was in this sub camp andis that where he was when
liberation happened, when theRussian army came?

So he was there, but he was forced on the death
march.
They knew the Nazis were comingand they forced him.
I wish I had all the numbers onme.
I'm sorry that I don't.
They forced him and I believetens of thousands of prisoners
on a death march.
I'm sorry if my numbers arewrong.

Was this the one that was going to Bergen-Belsen
or Maffhausen, because I knowthat those are two places people
ended up.

I don't know, but there were a lot of death
marches happening.
What I do know is that he waswalking in the freezing cold in
the winter of you know 1945.
Yeah, yeah.

Liberation from Auschwitz was January 7th, but
this was, this would have beenlike right before, because they
knew, yeah, they knew they werecoming, yeah, december of 1944
would make sense, or January,right before.

I believe it was January, right before liberation
.
Um, and he was walking.
For days People were dying leftand right from frostbite and
from again, dehydration,starvation.
It was freezing.
He just had this thin prisoneruniform and he talks about the
wooden clogs that he was wearingno socks, just wooden shoes.

(26:16):
The blisters and the pain wasimpossible, was impossible.
He didn't think he'd be able tosurvive anymore and it was
getting very unorganized.
The Nazis were not able to keeptrack of everyone and they were
trying to run for their lives aswell.
So my poppy and a bunch ofprisoners, when they had all

(26:37):
taken a break at one point andremember, the Nazis were
shooting anyone who stopped fora second.
It was just complete chaos.
As they're all walking throughthe forest, basically together,
my papi and a few prisoners hidin a haystack and they stayed
there for I don't know a day ortwo.
And then a new group of Naziguards had found them and they

(27:01):
were able to convince them thatthey were political Polish
prisoners and not Jewishprisoners, which is unbelievable
.
And these guards brought them toa prisoner of war camp where a
British brigade had beencaptured and was being held, and
there was some type ofagreement between the UK and

(27:24):
Hitler at the time where theyweren't killing British soldiers
, and there was a Jewish soldieron the British brigade who took
my papi under his wing, eventhough my papi spoke no English
whatsoever, and they kept himwith them in this POW camp and
said that my papi was part ofthem, and they gave him a

(27:48):
uniform to wear of a Britishsoldier who had passed away,
named Standish James.
My papi never forgot his nameand he went by the name Standish
James, and he held a cross andhe wore this British uniform in
the POW camp, and that's wherethey had been liberated.
Actually, no, no, they were alltaken out of the POW camp, then

(28:12):
was sent on another march, buthe was with the British Brigade,
and from there American troopsliberated them while they were
on the march, and he said he waskissing the ground and it was
the happiest day of his life, hesaid for months after, though
he was always looking over hisshoulder, thinking that there
was an officer German officerfollowing him.

(28:34):
He just couldn't get used tothe fact that he was free.

I feel like that would be really crazy after
years of dealing with somebodyliterally pointing a gun at your
head all the time to be.
The transition must have beencrazy.

You could just see how complicated the story is
yeah Well that's the thing is.
Every few years I'm like anexpert on it.
I'll rewatch the show offoundation video, I'll take
every single note and know allthe details.
And then you know, I interviewa survivor every single week.
So it's like all the survivordetails get like jumbled in my
head.
So I just I get a little like.

(29:10):
And then from there he went tolike three different countries
before he made his way toEngland where an orphanage took
him and then a Jewish family inEngland adopted him the Leaf
family.
We are still in touch with allthe descendants of the Leaf
family today.
They came to my bat mitzvah.
We visited them in England.
This family adopted him in aJewish family in England.

(29:33):
He lived with them for threeyears.
From there he went to Canadawhere an aunt had been living.
They did not treat him verywell and didn't really make him
feel welcome.
From there he left, went to theUnited States, met my grandma
on Orchard Beach in the Bronxand the rest is history.

(29:54):
There's a lot more to the story, but that's it in a nutshell.

No, every survivor's story that I've ever
heard.
It's very complicated and a lotof people moved around a lot.
You know it makes sense thatall the details wouldn't be
there, because it's a heard it'svery complicated and a lot of
people moved around a lot and ityou know it makes sense that
all the details wouldn't bethere, because it's a lot.
It's a lot it's amazing that heremembered all of that.

Incredible.
He, just up until the day hedied, he remembered everything.

He was very sharp.
He was all there.
I love that.

I love that he only had a two day decline too,
before his death.
It happened so suddenly Hisjust lungs were starting to fail
, but he was with it.
He saw me with him right beforehe passed and yeah, but you
know what, it was better thatthan for him to suffer for a
long period of time.

Yeah, of course.
Of course.
When did you become aware ofeverything that your grandfather
had been through?
Was he very open about thiswith people, about his
experience?
Because I know there's kind oftwo camps of this.
There's people that didn't talkabout it at all.
They were so scarred with whathappened to them they barely
even let people know what hadhappened to them during the war.
And then there were people whowere very outspoken about

(30:58):
everything that happened to them.
They felt it was almost theirduty to tell the stories of
other people who hadn't survived.

So my papi was a very quiet, reserved man always
Growing up.
He did not talk about it but hewould have if you asked him
about it.
No one asked him.
He did always show me hisnumber.
I don't believe he went aroundshowing other people his number
Later on in life he did, whichI'll get to in a minute but I

(31:26):
always knew that he had a tattooon his arm 143499.
That was the prisoner number hegot at Birkenau and from a young
age that was actually the firstnumber I probably ever had
memorized and I always knew hewas a Holocaust survivor.
But of course, as a little kidyou don't really understand what
that means, but I had alwaysbeen aware of it.

(31:47):
As he got older I was the onlyone in my family who would, you
know, ask him question afterquestion after question.
My mom, who was very protectiveover him, would say you know,
that's enough, that's enough.
And I was like no, he wants totalk, he's answering me, he
wants these stories to beremembered.
So he never talked about itunless he was asked.

(32:16):
And then later in life we joke,as he's in his like 90s and
hitting 100, he would be in thedoctor's office and pull up his
sleeve and show the doctor.
But I got him to speak a lotJust in the past few years.
He's gotten so many interviews.
They had moved down to Tampajust about two and a half years
ago, three years ago during thepandemic and in Tampa Fox 13,.
Tampa started interviewing himall the time Newspapers came out

(32:36):
.
So I think as he was startingto see that people were really
interested in his story, hebecame a lot more open with it
later on in life and a lot ofsurvivors, as they start to feel
their mortality, all of asudden start to open up and
speak about it.

You know, it takes also, I think, a while to kind
of not get over or deal with,but to feel comfortable
discussing that, because traumanever really goes away when
you've experienced somethinglike that, but I think the
severe pain of it becomes alittle bit easier to deal with.
So we're going to pivotcompletely and talk about your

(33:13):
career in journalism.
So what inspired you to becomea journalist and how did you get
started?
In such a competitive fieldit's really difficult to break
into that that's a greatquestion, so it's funny.

I like to say that my passion started in fifth
grade because I was chosen to beone of three reporters for the
first ever TV station at myelementary school, that's so
family.

We didn't have one of those.

It's a great story to say that I post those videos
sometimes, but the truth is Iwent to college actually, as the
reason I chose University ofDelaware is because I was
obsessed with Spanish.
I was the president of mySpanish Honor Society.
I was an AP.
Spanish was always my bestsubject.
I won, like, the Spanish awardfor my high school.
It was just like Dana's, agreat Spanish student.

(33:58):
So I didn't know what I wasgoing to combine it with.
But University of Delaware hada really unique study abroad
program where I went away for amonth.
They had these like six weekwinter breaks and you could
study abroad during that timeand during semester.
So I went away for like fiveweeks to Costa Rica, my freshman

(34:19):
year, for five weeks duringwinter break to Mexico, my
sophomore year, and then for afull spring semester four months
to Spain, my junior year.
So I went for their Spanishprograms and it was just.
It was incredible.
I learned how to speak Spanishreally well.
I definitely have a terribleaccent where you know I'm
American, but I knew I'd combineit with something I just didn't

(34:41):
know what.
And I applied for an internshipat NBC because at that point I
wanted to be a writer, like Iwanted to be behind the scenes
writing scripts for TV shows andit was my sophomore year.
I applied to be on, like theConan show which was there at
the time, or SNL, and they callme and say congratulations,

(35:04):
we're putting you in thenewsroom.
And I panicked.
I was in college.
I didn't really watch the newsthat much.
I was always running around, Ididn't know anything about the
news, I wasn't interested in thenews.
But NBC calls you with anewsroom internship.
You don't turn that down.
And it was WNBC, so the localNBC in New York, channel four.
And I fell in love with the newsindustry.

(35:24):
I was sitting at the assignmentdesk and 30 Rockefeller Center
answering calls and pitches.
They'd send me out withreporters in the field and I
just felt I, just I loved it fora few reasons.
I loved how educated it made mefeel.
Every single day I got toshadow reporters who became
experts on a different topicevery day.

(35:46):
They were forced to learn aboutevery politician and every
issue impacting the city and thetri-state area and I, just I
loved learning every day.
Secondly, it was so fun to seedifferent parts of the city and
the tri-state.
One day you're in Staten Island, the next day you're covering a
story in New Jersey, thenyou're on Long Island.
So it was really exciting,exciting to understand the whole

(36:10):
region that I lived in my wholelife and didn't really get to
know that well.
And then, lastly, I lovedmeeting new people.
To meet the most diverse people, from public housing tenants
who are fighting to get theirheat turned back on to someone
who just started the most uniquecompany, to politicians.
It was just so exciting.

(36:32):
And I reached out to thisprofessor at Delaware named
Ralph Begleiter.
He was like a 30-year foreignaffairs correspondent for CNN, a
really incredible reputationand career and he started
working at Delaware as hisprofessor in residence and I
begged him to let me into theirbroadcast class in the fall,

(36:54):
right after my summer internshipwas ending, and he said you
know, this is just for juniorsand seniors.
You need to have all theseprereqs.
And I begged him to let me in.
I said I learned so much, let.
And I begged him to let me in.
I said I learned so much, letme in.
So he let me in.
Am I rambling?
Do you want me to keep going?

No, no, no, no.
This is so interesting.
You're so passionate about ittoo, which is great, because
sometimes, when people are likewell, I got involved with
medicine because, no, like yourface is lighting up it was the
first time.

I was like this is what I need to do.
And he let me in and I was sounadvanced in this class.
So at the end of the class youhad to everyone voted.
I wanted to be an anchorreporter and I really never
cared about being on TV, I justloved reporting the facts and
being the one to go out and tolearn it all.
And I wanted to be voted intothe anchor reporter slot and

(37:42):
they voted me for the final TVproduction to be like the back
of the room camera girl andremember they had all been doing
this major for years.
But it was a wake up call likewow, I have a lot to learn.
Meanwhile, I think I'm the onlyone who became a reporter from
that class.

(38:05):
And for the rest of my next fewyears at school I was heavily
involved with the studenttelevision network.
For all broadcast classes.
I did a double major in Spanishand com.
I was on the student radiostation, so I just kind of
became my my passion.
And then, when I was at NBC,there were a few reporters that
I shadowed, including a reporternamed Greg Sergel who was like
the main reason I wanted tobecome a reporter.

(38:26):
He just treated me with so muchrespect.
He'd let me go out with one ofthe cameramen and do interviews
on my own and I he had gonethrough a program called Long
Island News Tonight LI NewsTonight through the New York
Institute of Technology on LongIsland and it was a very popular
program for journalists in NewYork.
It has now closed.

(38:47):
It closed the year after Ifinished and you could go
through just for a semester at atime to make a resume tape, or
a reel as we call it.
Or for me, I'm like, if I'mpaying to go through it, why
don't I just get a master'sdegree at the school?
So I got my master's there.
I did it in three semesters andpart of this news program is

(39:08):
you were going out in the fieldevery single day on Long Island
alongside reporters from everystation, and that's how I was
able to put a reel together.
I can keep going and tell youhow I got my first job.
It was a journey.

That's so interesting and a lot of people
I feel like would probably belike well, I want, like you said
, wanted to be a reporter sincefifth grade, but you kind of
randomly fell into something youwere really good at.
Yeah, and you were.
We know you're really good atit because I wasn't.

I wasn't always that good, I thought I was
really good.
And then people kept humblingme along the way and letting me
know what I needed to fix my mymentor in grad school, who I
love, and still just talked tohim yesterday.
Uh, I had said to him you know,it's so impossible to get your
first job in New York.
There's only like five, sixstations that hire 15, 20

(39:56):
reporters.
It is it is the mostcompetitive field.
And I said do you think I canget a job in New York?
He goes, I'd be very surprised.
And then he said but I've beensurprised before and I was like,
no, I'm going to make thishappen.
So I knew that if there was anyjob I could get, it would be at
a small station.
There was a local station, news12, which is in New Jersey,

(40:22):
long Island, westchester.
It's in all the suburban areas,also in the Bronx and Brooklyn,
I found I it's in all thesuburban areas, also in the
Bronx and Brooklyn.
I went through my alumnidatabase at the grad school I
was at found a reporter, acameraman at News 12, reached
out to him.
He got me an internship at News12, long Island From News 12,
long Island.
I spent a semester there in gradschool and they said if you
have any shot of being hired,it'll be at News 12 in the Bronx

(40:42):
or Brooklyn, where they hireone-man bands or a one-woman
show, where you shoot, write,narrate, edit, drive, do
everything yourself.
So from there they got me aninternship my final semester at
News 12 in the Bronx and Ishowed my reel to someone there
halfway through the internshipand the guy in charge said would

(41:02):
you like to go through ourtraining program here?
And I ran into the bathroom,called my mom screaming.
I knew about the trainingprogram.
It was literally my end, mygoal and, long story short, I
went through the trainingprogram After three weeks.
It's like American Idol.
You sit down with the heads ofthe station, they watch

(41:22):
everything you did in threeweeks and they either say yes,
we're taking you or no, we'renot.
And they hired me.
I spent six years there.
I won my first Emmy award there.
It was incredible.
I was.
I was a one woman show.
I shot, wrote, narrated, drovemyself all over Bronx and
Brooklyn and from there I gotreally lucky, getting my next

(41:43):
job at Fox 5 in New York where Ispent the next six years.

It's so impressive .

I know I could talk and talk, and talk.
You know what?
It's not that I stand out inany way.
I always believe in beingconfident.
Whether you are or not, youhave to exude confidence.
Make it till you make it and youneed them to like you, and you
need them to like you and youneed them to know who you are,
because they get dozens anddozens of candidate emails a

(42:09):
week.
So how do you stand out?
So I always just made surepeople I got to meet the right
person and that they knew me andthat they'd see that I wasn't
giving up.

It obviously worked out as you mentioned.
You got your first Emmy workingfor that station.
How did you find out that youwere nominated?
Was there a ceremony?
My husband didn't even knowthat that news reporters got
Emmys and I was like, oh yeah,they get Emmys.

Yeah, so it's the same organization, like the
Emmys, the big Emmys that yousee on TV, but it's just a
different chapter of it.
So these are the broadcastEmmys and they have different
regions.
Obviously, new York's the mostcompetitive.
I had actually gotten anothernomination that year and so I
got two nominations.
One was for a newscast, so Iwon alongside my colleagues.

(42:57):
We all were reporting, so itwas me and two other reporters,
an anchor, a weather person.
It was a massive snowstorm.
I was out covering the storm in, I think I was in Red Hook,
brooklyn, and it was just purecraziness.
It was like another petitereporter like myself who was

(43:19):
like recording me as I wastalking about all the, the,
whatever, the, whatever washappening and all the stats of
the storm and all the poweroutages and it was wild.
So that was amazing.
But I got another nomination,which I was more proud of, I
should say that same year, on aboy named Leiby Kletsky.

(43:40):
He was 11 or 12 years old, hehad been murdered and
dismembered and his body aJewish, orthodox boy turns out.
Another Orthodox person hadbeen the one to.
You have to look him up.
You have to look up the story ofLeiby Klecki L-E-I-B-Y last
name K-L-E-T-Z Klecki it was.

(44:04):
It was this frantic search forthis boy's body.
His body had been found in agarbage can, all dismembered,
right by my station.
And I was so invested in thisstory.
I was covering it for days anddays and days.
I had found out I hadinterviewed someone who met him
and I was one of only, I think,just one or two reporters who or

(44:27):
maybe I was the only reporterto get that contact.
I just, I just remember playingsuch a huge role in that story
and when I got that nomination,that was all I was focused on.
And when we're at the awardsceremony and I didn't win, I was
all bummed out because I put myheart and soul and I wanted to
do a sports memory lie.
And then, all of a sudden, Ihear my name called for the

(44:49):
other nomination, and so thatwas my first nomination on the
snowstorms.
But when I think of that yearand that ceremony, I really only
think of this boy, lybieKletzky, and you'll find
hundreds and hundreds ofarticles on him.
It was what a story.
I believe this is 2013, 2014.

I will have to look that up.

Yeah.

We didn't move to New York until August of 2013.
So this was probably.
I would have remembered hearingabout that.

Yeah, it was, and I knew you were going to ask me
about my Emmys and the questionsyou sent, so I brought this one
over, oh so fancy.
This was my most special one.
I don't know if you could seethis was the Forgotten Camps on
my journey to Poland in 2018.
My other one just came in themail a few days ago.
My most recent one.

(45:37):
I have three Emmys and they'reall four years apart 2014, 2018
and 2022.

You where do you keep them?
I'm jumping up head a littlebit.
Where do you?

can't see them right now.
I keep them on the mantel placeof um on top of my fireplace.

I've heard it's very popular for people to keep
awards in the bathroom becauseeveryone uses the bathroom when
they come to the house sothey'll always see it and Kate
Winslet apparently like has aspecial shelf for her Oscar so
people can make like Oscarspeeches and hold it in front of
the mirror, which I think is sofunny.

That is so cute, it's so funny, like I.
You know, I got my first one awhile ago now, so I don't think
that much about it anymore and Iforget about them until someone
comes and they're like oh myGod, can I hold that, or is that
real?
Or some people say what is that?
Some people do not know what itis, uh, yeah, but I definitely
know what an.
Emmy is it's very cool.

(46:33):
It actually looks really shinyright now.

Is it heavy Because I Tony awards?

are not heavy, okay, yeah.

Because I know I've held an Oscar.
They're heavy.
Tony Awards the base is made ofplastic.
They're not heavy.

So I'm always curious about that this is heavy
.

So, talking about kind of how that award you just
showed me happened In 2018, youwent to Poland to learn about
your family who had beenmurdered there.
You wrote and produced threeshort films during this time.
So you wrote and produced threeshort films during this time.
So what kind of inspired thistrip and what parts of Poland

(47:07):
did you visit?
I also know that this, thistrip was with Holocaust expert
Dr Michael Berenbaum, and thisis literally because I was
watching your, your short film.
This is literally what I wantto do when I'm done with grad
school, because my husband, Iown a tour company and I am
hopefully going to be aHolocaust expert someday.

So what I want to do is that you own a tour
company.
Yeah, my husband and I own awalking tour company.
Take me on as the documentarianand I'll I'll record your whole
journey.

Yeah, but literally the trip you went on
is what I want to go to gradschool to be able to do is to
take groups of people over toPoland and Germany and other
parts of central and EasternEurope to talk about the
Holocaust.
So what?

what inspired Separately because the March of
the living, I mean.

They're always looking for people like you, so
when we're done recording, we'lltalk about this because I know
I like this not that we're goingto record this, but I because I
, as Patrick said, I was anactor for a very long time, so I
never finished my BFA because Iwas like I'm working, I don't
need a college degree.
So I'm Monday going back toschool at the new school, for I

(48:04):
have a year left.
And then Gratz in Pennsylvaniahas this MAP to PhD program in
Holocaust and genocide studiesand it's all online so I can do
it while being a mother andworking.

So that's kind of my way.
I had so many questions, sowe'll talk about this after,
because I have a lot ofresources for you.
That's great, yes.

No, no, and I'm super my I, poor Patrick.
I was like so when I decided Iwas going back to school.
I was like, just so, you know,like the next, like seven years
of our life are just going to belike all Holocaust all the time
.
It'll be worth it, I promiseknow.
Just tell me all about it.

(48:41):
I'm so curious.

So I had heard about the March of the Living.
They go every year on.
You know there's two HolocaustRemembrance Days.

Yeah, International is a week from
today.

Correct A week from tomorrow A week from
tomorrow.
Okay, saturday the 27th, okay,but the main one that's really

(49:17):
recognized even more across the.
I mean, they're both recognized, but I think Yom HaShoah in the
spring Holocaust RemembranceDay in the spring is generally
more I don't want to saycelebrated, but I do think that
people come to get morerecognized.
But, um, so every year on YomHaShoah, the march of the living
, an organization takesthousands about 10,000 kids a
year, mostly high schoolstudents to Poland on a nine-day
journey and they go to all theconcentration camps, they go to
ghettos, they tour differenttowns and they, on Yom HaShoah

(49:42):
the actual day, they walk fromAuschwitz to Birkenau now, so
from Auschwitz I to Auschwitz II, and then they spend the day in
Birkenau listening to speakersand walking around the camp.
It's really an incrediblyemotional day.
I had heard about this program.
I really wanted to go on it.
While it was mostly geared tohigh school students, there were

(50:03):
a few young professional groupswho went for people in their
20s and 30s and 40s not many.
I found one, only one that yearthat was going, and it was based
out of a synagogue in LA calledTemple Sinai.
It was majority Persian Jewsfrom LA, which was fascinating
to me because, while they havetheir own persecution family

(50:25):
stories.
They really weren't affected bythe Holocaust per se.
So the fact that they were allspending this time and money to
go on a trip, I was blown awayby their dedication.
So it was majority.
It was like 35 persians from lame, an ashkenazi jew from new
york and a few other ashkenazijews, there was one non-jewish

(50:48):
girl from australia, there was,uh, two other australians and I
think then maybe someone fromchicago, just a few scattered in
, but majority was from thesynagogue.
And then I brought a friendwith me, actually from New York,
who last minute decided to come.
So we flew over, we met them inLA and I brought my camera with

(51:13):
me.
Oh, I had gone to my boss at Fox5, where I was no longer a one
woman show.
I had a camera crew, I hadeditors, I had a photographer
who would drive me everywhereand but we're a local New York,
new Jersey, connecticut stationand I asked my boss would you
let me go to Poland and, youknow, create documentaries or

(51:33):
short films on my work?
And he is a Muslim man who isso into the Holocaust and my
biggest supporter.
And he is a Muslim man who isso into the Holocaust and my
biggest supporter, and he is ahuge history buff and he was
like absolutely, and his name'sAhmad Oscar.
I'm going to give him a niceshout out because he's one of
the most incredible people I'veever met and he did so much for

(51:55):
me and for my career.
And he said you know, you're ona local news station.
I can't pay for you to go,you're going to have to pay your
own way and I can't send acamera crew with you, but I'll
give you our best equipment, oursmall equipment, and you can
shoot the whole thing, and I'llgive you an editor when you get
back and I'll give you plenty oftime to put together a story or

(52:15):
two.
Wow, so that was amazing.
So I had to teach myself.
They had this amazing tinylittle cinematography camera and
I had to teach myself how touse it.
It was really complicated.
So I spent like weeks doingYouTube tutorials leading up to
the trip and then I learned howto use it really well Every day.
My footage got a little betteron the trip, but I recorded

(52:37):
literally every second of my dayand I came back and I put three
short films together.
The first one's nine minuteslong.
The others are about five orsix minutes long and I could
have kept going.
That's how much footage that Icaptured.
And we went around to all thesedifferent camps.
This trophy is based on my firstfilm called the Forgotten Camps

(53:00):
, and I thought it was reallyimportant to do this story,
because everyone hears ofAuschwitz, understandably so.
More than a million men, womenand children were killed in
Auschwitz alone.
It was the largest death camp.
But we also hear so much ofAuschwitz because it was such a
massive camp that there are somany Auschwitz survivors because
they were needed for labor.

(53:21):
So that's, in a nutshell, whywe know so much about Auschwitz.
But there were so many othercamps that had almost no
survivors.
There's a camp called Belzec.
People pronounce it differently.
Michael Berenbaum calls itBelchik, other people call it
Belzeix, but it's B-E-L-Z-E-C.
There were only two knownsurvivors at the entire camp.

(53:45):
It was a strictly death camp.
Treblinka was strictly a deathcamp.
It had a handful of survivors,and when I say a handful I
really mean a handful.
People were taken off thecattle cars and gassed
immediately.
There were no work camps.
So all these camps that I feltlike were forgotten about.
There's a camp called Majdanek,which the fact that Majdanek

(54:07):
existed is mind-blowing, becauseit existed on top of a hill
overlooking all these Polishtowns.
These people knew what wasgoing on right in their backyard
.
People knew what was going onright in their backyard and here
and at Maidana today, there'sstill a massive pile of human

(54:29):
remains that have been I forgethow many pounds that has been
preserved.
So this story focuses on all,not all, the different camps.
There were tens of thousands ofcamps in the landscape of
Europe that people don't evenknow about, small camps like
Colmar, where my poppy was, butI really thought it was
important to focus on camps thatwe don't hear every day.

I was.
I literally text you about thisbecause in that book they
called it it was OperationHydric, after Reinhard Hydric,
who was one of the designers ofthe Holocaust and he was.
He was assassinated inCzechoslovakia.
It was a whole thing.
You can Google it.
It was very interesting, butthey were literally like they
was just pure gassing, and Ithink it's so, like I was saying

(55:06):
it's so important, I was sayingto you it's so important that
people know about this because,like you were saying, auschwitz
is kind of like the big one andit was.
Yes, it was a terrible, awfulplace, but there were places
where really people, people justgot off a train and they were
immediately sent to the gaschambers and.
With no option to live?

Yeah, it was.
It's kind of crazy.
No possibility to live.

I should say yeah and I think that a lot of people
you know Did you learn?
Did you learn from?

the forgotten camps.
I did, I did, I learned and Ididn't know any of that.
And there's so many other campslike that.
We also visited Plashov, whichwas the camp where Schindler
correctly took his, and a lot ofthese camps don't exist anymore
.
It's just monuments and plaquesto mark the camps.
So, yeah, that's why I reallythought it would be an

(55:47):
interesting.

There's this crazy diagram that I saw in Auschwitz
that I have a picture of on myphone and I posted on Facebook,
where it shows all the thousandsof camps throughout Europe, and
I think a lot of people don'trealize there were other camps.
So that's why works like yourshort film are so important,
because I think people kind ofhave an idea about these things,
but there there's a lot of veryspecific stuff that they're not

(56:09):
really.

I think Dr Darbaum was at 40,000 camps in the
landscape of Europe that he saidin that film it's a lot of
camps.
I mean, yeah, it's.
It's unbelievable.

So you went on, as we've been talking about, to
win your second Emmy for this.
I was this more meaningful thanyour first because of the
subject matter.

Absolutely, and this was like all me, like I
shot it I.
I didn't edit it, I shot it, Iwrote it, I produced it.
Um, this, I put my blood, sweatand tears into into filming
this.
So, yeah, this was prettyamazing.
What was sad is that I won this.
So it's always the Emmys arelike for the following year.

(56:48):
So this was at the height ofCOVID the ceremony and this is
so funny, so we had to watch itlive and there were two ways to
watch it.
You can watch it, stream itlive from the Facebook the
Emmy's Facebook page that year,or from the Emmy's website, and
I forget which one I waswatching on and you're not even

(57:09):
gonna believe this.
My category is called, theyannounced the winner and then,
blank, my screen just goes outand right away I start getting
bombarded with people saying, ohmy God, what happened?
What happened?
And then another group of textssaying congratulations,
congratulations.
So one of the webs people werewatching from one of the two.

(57:30):
One of them had completely justgone down in that moment, but
the other website was stillstreaming.
So everyone watching was eitherlike, oh, oh my God, did she
just win?
And the other half had heardthat I won and I didn't, and my
husband's next to me recordingand he was recording the screen
and they're like, and the winneris, and then it just goes blank

(57:51):
.
I'm not even exaggerating, itwas that exact moment.
And then you hear me screamingwhat, what, what just happened,
and I have this all recorded.
It was like the craziest thing.
So I didn't actually get tohear it live, but some people
did.

Were you able to find video of it later?

Yeah, I don't.
I think I went back and wasable to find it later.

Okay, so you got to hear her name.

That's so nice, yeah, I think the recorded one
wound up being up on theFacebook page after that.
But yeah, it was crazy.

So you've kind of transitioned from traditional
reporting to now working for theHolocaust Memorial and
Tolerance Center of NassauCounty as a storyteller.
So what exactly does that mean?
I saw on the website thatyou're their first storyteller.
So what does that mean and whatmade you decide to make this
transition into somethingsimilar but a little bit

(58:40):
different?

It was a really, really, really hard decision for
me to make.
I had worked so hard to becomea journalist, to become a news
reporter, to get my first twojobs in New York.
But I'll be completelytransparent as I was starting to

(59:02):
make creative family, I wouldget home at 9 o'clock at night
and I was pretty much a strangerto my daughter.
We had been in the city.
When we were in the city it wasfine.
I was actually a quick walk towork at Fox five.
But during the pandemic myhusband was working fully remote
and we were in a tiny littleone bedroom apartment with a six
month old and he just needed toget out.
So we moved to Long Island andthat made the commute really

(59:24):
difficult for me and I can tellyou I had maybe three
Thanksgivings off in the entire12 years.
Um, between both jobs I workedevery single weekend.
I worked almost every singleholiday.

It's like being an actor you miss funerals,
weddings, birthday parties, yeah.

I did miss a funeral that I'll never forgive
myself for.
I just I.
I my husband's gone by himselfto weddings.
He was by himself and, and youknow, I started to fill in at
the anchor desk, but that meansthat I was working Saturdays.
There's really like no way towin in this industry, and even
you know the anchors who havebeen in the industry forever,

(01:00:07):
who are veterans.
They're working the morningshow, which is a 3 am start time
.
I worked the morning show forsix months.
I was in the door at work at2.30 in the morning.
So it was getting very difficultfor me.
I had a second baby on the wayand I just felt like I needed to

(01:00:28):
be a little more present for myfamily.
And mentally, I mean, it was avery draining job but I love it.
I have so much respect foranyone in this field, but after
12 years I was ready to trysomething new, but I would not
leave unless I had the perfectsituation lined up.
I wasn't going to risk my.
I didn't want to lose my careerthat I had worked so hard for.

(01:00:50):
So I was thinking what could Ido that would be just as
meaningful, just as impactfuland I wouldn't feel like I was
losing my whole skill set that Ihad honed so well and I had
started a Holocaust series atFox 5 after my journey to Poland
.
I had interviewed oh my God, Idon't even know so many

(01:01:10):
survivors.
I would go all around thetri-state area interviewing
survivors.
I did a half hour special onHolocaust survivors that I
anchored and wrote.
That aired on January 27th of2022, which was an Emmy
nomination that I just had.
That I didn't win, which wasalso a huge letdown, but I won
another one, which was also veryspecial, but that was just this

(01:01:34):
past October.
But anyway, I was like I want tobe.
I just want to tell Holocauststories.
It's all I want to do.
So I start reaching out toother stations and contacts I
have and bigger networks andwhile people thought it was
really fascinating Holocaust was80 years ago being a Holocaust
reporter, no one's really goingto open up that type of position
.
Yeah, so I'm like who would?

(01:01:56):
So I'm like a Holocaust museum.
So my first thought was I wantto go big.
I want to do this for theHolocaust museum in DC, because
I can interview survivorsanywhere and just post stories
online.
I spoke to a contact in DC,spoke to local, smaller museums
and what I realized is that thesmaller museums needed me way

(01:02:17):
more than the bigger museums,because the big museums have
these huge PR teams.
Small museums didn't haveanyone.
So the museum on Long Island ahalf hour away from me called
the Holocaust Memorial andTolerance Center of Nassau
County, which we call HMTC.
I spoke to the chairperson atthe time, andrea Bolander, and
she loved my idea.

(01:02:37):
So I pitched being the firstever storyteller, basically
doing the same quality storiesthat were airing on Fox, but
instead of having a TV platformblasting them all over social
media the museum's Instagram,facebook, youtube pages and she
loved the idea.
Number one, it was a way tokeep survivor stories alive and

(01:02:59):
number two, to put this museumon the map.
And it has been so incredible.
My stories are now getting over100,000 views.
The following on the museum andon my page has grown
exponentially.
I thought that leaving news thatI'd kind of become irrelevant
and I feel like my career isjust growing and I think, in

(01:03:22):
general, when people like tofollow others who are passionate
and whose work is their truecalling, and I think anyone who
hears what I do knows that thisis what I'm meant to be doing
and it's been an amazing time,and I can still win Emmy Awards.
That's the cool part.
That's very cool.
Emmys have changed theirqualifications because so many

(01:03:44):
organizations have gone tostreaming platforms.
So if you continue to do thisbroadcast type segment in a way
that is airing on yourorganization's website for a
local audience still can besubmitted.
So my dream is to get first anomination for the museum and
hopefully one day a win for themuseum.

(01:04:04):
I shoot, write, narrate and editeverything myself now, which is
what I wanted to do.
I wanted to have full control.
I've interviewed about 50survivors in just the past year,
almost all of them in person,and it's been incredibly
rewarding.
I create documentaries.
They each take me about fourmonths to put together because
my schedule is wild and I waitfor archival video to come in

(01:04:25):
and it's a process, but it hasreally been fascinating and I
just it is exactly what I'vemeant to be doing and Fox five
is having me on their show nextweek to talk about my job.
A CBS morning show had me on um, interviewed on News 12 all the
time I was on WABC.
So I still kind of get to keepmy I'm like a spokesperson kind

(01:04:46):
of for the museum now I stillget my broadcast TV fix a little
bit just enough, but I reallyjust get to do this incredible
work that will live on,hopefully, for generations to
come.

Nicole Kelly (01:04:58):
Is this a museum you had been to before taking on
your position, like even hadmaybe grown up going to?

Dana Arschin (01:05:04):
Yes, I was very familiar with the museum.
It's only it's about 30 yearsold.
We're actually in our 30th yearright now.
I had been there actually fornews stories over the years and
I had gone in graduate school.
I did a 15 minute thesis onHolocaust a video thesis on
Holocaust survivors as my thesisproject in grad school.
I did a 15-minute video thesison Holocaust survivors as my
thesis project in grad school.
So Holocaust has been in me fora long time, even before, and

(01:05:27):
at News 12, my first job, I haddone a two-part series on
survivors.
But yes, I had been to themuseum.
I interviewed a bunch ofsurvivors there when I was in
graduate school.
And it's not a big museum, it'ssmall.
You could probably do the wholething in an hour.
What we are, more than anything?
We're an education center.
So almost every school districtacross Long Island comes

(01:05:49):
through our doors Monday throughFriday the entire academic year
.
We have about 5,000 students amonth that we're educating
either at our center or we bringsurvivors and trained educators
to their school.
So most importantly is that wedo in-person education with
students.

That was my question, kind of what sets you
guys apart, which I think isreally great, because some of
the larger museums I'm sure theydeal a lot with students, but a
lot of them are it's weird tosay like tourist attractions
where if you're visitingWashington DC, it's a museum
you'll visit.
But having local museums isvery important as well.
So, you've talked a littleabout interviewing these
survivors on behalf of themuseum, so what does that

(01:06:29):
process entail?

So it's funny.
People say you're havingtrouble finding survivors.
It's as if everyone knows aboutmy work.
I have a list of like100-something survivors and I
can't even call them all fastenough, which is amazing.
I try really hard to do.
The oldest survivors, the campsurvivors who are still with us,

(01:06:51):
are all hitting 100 and beyond.
But the fact that they're stillalive actually has shown I have
seen that a lot of them arereally just like my poppy, like
with it up until the last minute.
Clearly their genetics areincredible.
Yeah, those are usually my bestinterviews, not because they're
any more amazing than any ofthese other young survivors that

(01:07:13):
I interview, but their storiesare a lot more harrowing what
they went through.
But our youngest survivors arein their 80s, in their about 83
to 86.
They were either just born asthe Holocaust was happening.
One survivor, leo Ullman, who Ido all of my work with or

(01:07:34):
majority of my work with,because he's so articulate, I
bring him as like my guest on alot of the shows.
He was a toddler in Amsterdamand he was two years old when a
Christian family hit him for afew years and that's how he
survived a Christian family thatrisked their lives in Amsterdam
to save him.
So yeah, you know every storyis very different.

(01:07:56):
But yes, the younger survivorswere either don't have much of a
recollection of it.
They share their parents'stories more.
And the older survivors are thecamp survivors and I'm trying
to get the older ones as quicklyas I can.

Yeah, it's so important because it is
literally a dying out generation.

Yeah, and you said what does it entail?
I try really hard not just tofocus on how did you survive and
what happened.
I love hearing about everydaylife before the war.
What do you remember your momcooking on Shabbat?
What was the smell like of thebaked challah in the oven?
What was your favorite thing toeat?

(01:08:36):
Usually my best soundbites arethem describing some part of
their family life or somethingthat they ate or some type of
holiday.
And I try really to humanize myinterviews and I have a pretty
casual way that I do myinterviews.
I don't have any questionswritten down ever.
I try to be really in themoment and just bounce off them.

(01:08:56):
But I do a heavy focus on lifebefore the war, before I lead
into the war breaking out, andlife during the war and post-war
.

Which leads me to what I had a question about is
we talked about the ShoahFoundation, which is after I
think it was like around thetime Schindler's List came out,
Steven Spielberg.
They've interviewed tens andthousands of survivors.
Is that one of the things thatyou think sets your interviews
apart, as opposed to the ShoahFoundation interviews, as you
focus a lot on pre-war life?

No, I don't think they're necessarily so different
.
I think, you know, there wereso many volunteers who went
around and conducted theseinterviews and they all had
different styles.
As I'm doing this, I'm learningmore and more and more, so I
mean, my style has even changedin the last year.
So, no, I don't know ifanything necessarily sets me

(01:09:47):
apart.
There's nothing more special ormore important about my
interviews than those interviews.
They're all just as important,and I just yeah, I'm grateful
for anyone who has taken thetime to do this.

Is there maybe one specific interview that you've
conducted that kind of standsout to you as being especially
memorable, other than, obviously, your poppy?

I can a few come to mind really quickly.
There is a survivor who stilltakes tango dance lessons every
single week, takes tango dancelessons every single week and I
went to interview her at the endof one of her lessons and
captured her dancing with heryoung instructor and doing dips

(01:10:30):
and twirls and it was sofascinating.
I had another.
I interviewed another survivorwho is still boxing and she had
taken a break during theinterview, but I just saw her
this week and she told me I'mback to boxing now, so I want to
invite you to come, and they'reall in their 90s.

(01:10:52):
She's like I want you to cometo a session and watch me
kickboxing.
It's amazing.
And you could follow her Hername's Gilda Zielinski on
Instagram.
She posts videos of her boxing.
It's so cool.
I interviewed a few womensurvivors who have beautiful
voices and who sang and playedpiano for me two women who play

(01:11:16):
piano and there's they'rebeautiful, beautiful voices.
And one of those women, hersister, wrote a diary like Anne
Frank's diary.
It's unbelievable.
It's hundreds of pages abouther hiding during the war and I
got so emotional.
I usually don't cry, I'musually kind of numb on these

(01:11:36):
interviews and I was tearing up.
It was so emotional reading thewords of.
You know, it's so easy to justto hear the story related to you
from someone else, but toactually feel the ink and see
this person's emotions on page,that was really difficult for me
.
One woman she was tough asnails, I mean, she didn't crack

(01:11:58):
a smile and her story wasfascinating.
She's an auschwitz survivor.
The number on her arm uh, hertattoo prisoner number adds up
to 18 high and I posted thatvideo.
It also, I think it hit ahundred thousand views.
Um, it just people went.
It went viral because peoplewere so fascinated by the fact

(01:12:19):
she says I survived becausethese numbers equal high and
it's just.
Each interview truly is so.
There's not an interview I dowhere my jaw doesn't drop, even
interviews where they weren't.
As you know, there's onesurvivor where his story is not
very tragic.
He was born in Potenza,southern Italy, and they lived

(01:12:41):
in an area where it was likefree confinement, where Jews
could actually live freely inthis area and while his story
wasn't tragic, it was justfascinating.
I had never heard that before.
It was a really rare city thatwas protected.
So just every single story I do, I learn something so unique.
Really, they're all incredible.

So this last portion of my interview is kind
of like the actor studio.
They're just short formquestions that I ask all of my
guests, so no need to kind ofoverthink any of this.
What is your favorite Yiddishword?

It's a good question.
So the word I use the most isschlep, like, oh, I have to
schlep her to school in the snow, or sorry, you had to schlep
all this way, but I likechutzpah.
He has a lot of chutzpah.
Um, what is my, what's my momsay when?
Um, why can I think right now,when someone's really cheap, oh,
um, why am I blanking on theword?

(01:13:42):
You know what I'm talking about.

I do know what you're talking about, but I
don't know the word.

Okay, I can't think of it.
I use mensch a lot, um, oh, myGod, this word's bothering me.
But yeah, um so those are mywords.

What is your favorite Jewish holiday?

Okay, You're going to laugh, but I love Yom Kippur
.
So for a few reasons I feellike my life is so privileged,
Like what we talked about before, like they don't make strength
like that anymore, For I can goone day of no food and no water
to just honor what my ancestorsendured for generations, and I

(01:14:23):
feel so connected to my poppyand to my ancestors on that day
I just it also.
Just it just brings me backdown to earth a little bit.
Just I, we just have it so easy.
So for me it's not about thereligion, it's about just making
a sacrifice because I'm soprivileged to live the life that
I live.
And then breaking the fast is myfavorite day of the year.

(01:14:44):
So right after Yom Kippur,where we fast all day we've been
hosting the past few years Imake a fresh mac and cheese, we
get bagels and lox and we dolike a dairy meal, and so just
fasting during the day, I justlike that connection I feel to
my ancestors.
And then breaking the fast withall the food is the best part,

(01:15:05):
of course.

If you were to have a bat mitzvah today, what
would the theme of your party be?

Circus.
So I'm a huge flying trapezecircus girl.
I've been doing trapeze since Iwas 10.

I juggle.

I have a lot of really weird hidden hobbies and
talents, so it would definitelybe circus girl.
I've been doing trapeze since Iwas 10.
I juggle.
I have a lot of really weirdhidden hobbies and talents, so
it would definitely be circusthemed.

What profession other than your own would you
want to attempt?

Being a professional flying trapeze
acrobat.

That's one I will probably not get from any other
guest ever.
If heaven is real and God isthere to welcome you, what would
you like to hear them say?

I would like to hear God say you did well.

So thank you so much for joining me, Dana.
If someone was interested invisiting the museum you work at
or watching your videos, whatwould be the easiest way to get
that information?

So find me on Instagram, facebook, twitter or
X as Dana Arshin A-R-S-C-H-I N.
I post all my stories there.
Our museum is H-M-T-C-L-I,which you can find also on all
those platforms, and if you wantto come, we're open pretty much

(01:16:16):
standard business hours like 10to 4-ish every day, saturdays
as well.
Come visit the museum.
It's incredible, and what'sgreat about the museum is you
could do it in a half hour.
You could do it in five hours.
You can take your time.
It's small but there's a lot ofinformation, so it's a really
great place to visit for the dayand just support us.

(01:16:38):
Sorry to make a donation pitch,but we're a nonprofit.
You know we can't run withoutour generous donors and grants
that we receive.
So, and I'm also looking forsomeone to fund my position as
well, because, while my positionis so important, it doesn't
make the center run like oureducation team makes the center
run.
So any philanthropists feelinginspired out there and wants to

(01:17:01):
make sure that I can keep up mypassion of interviewing
survivors, reach out to me andlet me know.
But otherwise, just yoursupport, watching our stories,
your views, your likes, yourcomments, your engagement that
means everything.

Great.
Thank you so much for joiningme.
This has been Shebrew in theCity and I'm Nicole Kelly.
Thank you.

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"Summertime" - An Interview with 3X Emmy Winner Dana Arschin on Holocaust Education and Storytelling

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}"Summertime" - An Interview with 3X Emmy Winner Dana Arschin on Holocaust Education and Storytelling