hmTv at HMTC Podcasts Ep 401: Legacy Chronicles with Donna Rosenblum and guest Gail Kastenholz on hmTv
In this episode of Legacy Chronicles: Honoring the Past, Shaping the Future, Donna Rosenblum, Director of Education at the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center, sits down with longtime HMTC docent and Second Generation Committee Chair Gail Kastenholz for a powerful conversation about memory, identity, and responsibility.
Gail shares the remarkable story of her parents, Ralph and June Hecht, Holocaust survivors from Stanislaw, Poland, who escaped the ghetto and survived in hiding, then rebuilt their lives in a displaced persons camp before immigrating to Brooklyn. She reflects on what it means to grow up as a child of survivors, the silence many families lived with, and the moments that helped her understand loss, resilience, and the unique bond among “2Gs.”
The conversation also explores Gail’s decades of Second Generation leadership, her work supporting survivors connected to HMTC, and her philosophy as an educator: tours that prioritize discussion, personal story, and the urgent lesson that words matter, choices matter, and history is not just the past, but a tool for living with courage and conscience today.
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