For the second year in a row, the students at Naaleh High School for Girls have had the privilege of participating in “Names, Not Numbers©,” the celebrated documentary project created by Tova Fish-Rosenberg that has students produce documentaries of interviews with Holocaust survivors. Twenty-two students signed on to spend the year learning about the process of producing a professional Holocaust documentary.

Over the course of the school year, the students have been researching both the biographies of their interviewees and the historical period and geographic location in which they lived. This information was used as the basis for the interviews, which took place on February 23 and 24. Each of the four groups had the privilege of interviewing a Holocaust survivor and filming their unique story. The survivors, Leo Weinraub, Chayim Fohn, Mona Parnes and Rabbi Nochum Cywiak, generously shared stories from their lives before, during and after the Holocaust. For three of the survivors, this was the first time they had their story officially documented for posterity. The students ran the state-of-the-art video and recording equipment and acted as the interviewers. In the coming weeks, the students will be editing the raw footage, with the help of a professional editor, into 20-minute documentaries.

When asked for their reactions to the program, the students overwhelmingly mentioned how meaningful and educational it has been to participate in the “Names, Not Numbers©” project. For most of them, this was their first experience speaking to a Holocaust survivor. Though two of the survivors were relatives of the students, they both remarked that neither had ever heard their complete stories before participating in the “Names, Not Numbers©” project. “I knew his story, but hearing it from him really impacted the way I think about the Holocaust. It affected my family directly, and that’s how I’m going to remember it,” said one student who interviewed her great grandfather.