A group of eighth grade Ben Porat Yosef students filmed interviews with survivors of the Holocaust survivors in the next step in the program, as part of the school’s affiliation with the “Names, Not Numbers”© program. The students interviewed Stella Levi and Tova Friedman, both survivors of Auschwitz, and also Felice Stokes, who was born in Germany in 1939 and hidden in a small village during the war. They were able to learn about both the experiences of Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews during the Holocaust, as Levi, was one of approximately 152 survivors from the Rhodes community, once a thriving center of Sephardic Jewry, which is now part of Greece.

The students were deeply moved by the survivors’ stories and stayed to speak with them after filming was over in order to continue their conversations. They are being guided in the project by BPY teacher Amanda Dreyer, herself a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. Dreyer said that she “was inspired to study Holocaust education in college and, now, “Names Not Numbers” has given [her] the opportunity to continue that education and make it a part of [her] teaching.”