This week I received an email announcement of an 8-minute animated video created by a group of 12-year old students at a local middle school, one of whom is an upcoming bar mitzvah at my synagogue. The film is based on an interview of an Auschwitz survivor, Erika Jacoby, who tells her story. The students created the visuals.
The film is astounding in its own right, beautifully executed and moving to watch, and even more so given that it was created by very young Jewish and non-Jewish students.
Given the diminishing and aging community of Holocaust survivors, we in the Jewish world have worried how younger generations of Jews would come to understand and regard the Holocaust and its significance in Jewish history.
This film ends on a vision of hope and is worth seeing.
To read more and find the link to the vimeo go to my blog at the Times of Israel –
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/young-people-remembering-holocaust-survivors/
Rabbi John Rosove's Blog 
Thank you for the link. I was approached on behalf of a young woman-a Confirmand–who was worried that her peers in affluent Shawnee Mission, Kansas, schools did not know of the Holocaust. She asked a few of us to write “letters” to our parents, now deceased, about what we knew of their lives during those terribly dark times. She then went on to publish our letters in a book called, Remembrance: The Second Generation, compiled by Evelyn Freilich. It was a very disturbing letter for me to write but I was incredibly heartened and touched by the caring and work of the young woman, far removed from my family story. I look forward to watching the video.
This is extraordinary. It is made all the more poignant because of the rumblings in our own reality. What exceptional kids. Perhaps they should visit the high schools in Orange County.
John: This is truly impressive and heartwarming- thanks for sharing it.
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I shared teh vimeo with my family and with my Facebook ‘friends.’ Touching. Beautiful. Honest. Hopeful.