Rabbi Pesach Raymon Yeshiva eighth grade students interviewed Holocaust survivors for their “Names, Not Numbers^©” documentary during the week of March 1. “Names, Not Numbers^©” is a unique, interactive, multi-media Holocaust project created by educator Tova Fish-Rosenberg. Throughout the year, eighth grade teachers, Rabbi Nachman Lapa and Morah Nitza Adler, prepared the students as they reviewed the biographies of the participating Holocaust survivors, and prepared the interview questions based on the survivors’ biographies. In preparation for the interview days, the students learned from professionals how to interview effectively and how to film and edit the resulting movie. The students put their skills to work during the interview week. With strict distancing and safety measures in place, they greeted the Holocaust survivors, interviewed them as they listened to their heartbreaking and inspirational stories and filmed the survivors and each other during the process. The emotional week ended with a moving Emunah session with Rabbi Miodownik, a Judaic studies teacher at the school.

The students will now apply their editing skills to the raw footage as they review each survivor’s film and edit it in preparation for their oral history documentary, “Names, Not Numbers^©: A Movie in the Making.” The result of all of this hard work will be an unforgettable film which will be screened for school families, the survivors and the community in the spring.

This was the school’s seventh year participating in this meaningful culmination of the eighth grade’s Holocaust curriculum. The “Names, Not Numbers^©” program is generously supported by a prominent national foundation.

For more information, contact RPRY “Names, Not Numbers^©” coordinator at [email protected]