The first thing you notice is the seriousness with which the students handle themselves, and the situation, as they interview and interact with ‘their’ Holocaust survivor in the ‘Names Not Numbers©’ project. Eighth-grade students at the Rabbi Pesach Raymon Yeshiva in Edison, in five groups of five or six people, are each paired with a different survivor, whom they research and then interview at length, to prepare for their segments of the school’s annual ‘Names Not Numbers©’ film. Watching one group as they spoke with their subject, Holocaust survivor Milan Schwartz of Ocean Township, on February 6, you couldn’t help but admire how they all treated their task with respect and care.

The other thing you notice is the professionalism the students exercise. The boys, all dressed in suits, carefully went about their different roles with great care and deference to their interview subject and each other. When the subject spoke, they all listened carefully. And when the interview ended and it was time to offer a thank-you gift to Mr. Schwartz (part of the “Names Not Numbers©” process), they presented it to him and took in his response with a deliberateness that seemed well beyond their years.

RPRY invites the entire community to join them for the community screening of their 2024 “Names Not Numbers: A Movie in the Making©” film, which will chronicle the experiences of Holocaust survivors Ruth Millman, Chaya Gurkov, Helen Rubin, Lois Flamholz, Erika Leviant, and Milan Schwartz. The community screening will be held on Tuesday May 21, at 7:30 p.m., at RPRY.

“The Names, Not Numbers©” program is an interactive, multimedia Holocaust project, created by educator Tova Fish-Rosenberg and supported by a prominent national foundation. Visit https://bit.ly/48avxFv to find out more.

Harry Glazer is the Middlesex County editor of The Jewish Link. Occasionally, he writes about RPRY.
He can be reached at [email protected]