News & Impact

The official start of the Legacy Tour began midday Friday, the 24th with a meet and greet of all the participants with introductions around including the introduction of Dariuysz Kyzniar, to be our tour guide during the entire time of schedule tour in Poland. He distributed earphones and receivers to each of us so that we could hear every tour leader quite well without having to stand close –much like the museum audio tours we have all used. Brilliant in conception and well executed. We will travel by the same quite comfortable, spacious and sleek big tour bus throughout our… Read More

When Rose Ludwig was growing up in a rural part of Riverside County, she was never taught about the Holocaust in school. That’s why, as a teacher at San Francisco’s Visitacion Valley Middle School, she makes sure that her students learn the Holocaust’s lessons. Her efforts earned her JFCS’ Holocaust Center’s 2014 Morris Weiss Award, which yearly goes to an exemplary educator dedicated to teaching about the Shoah and other forms of genocide. Morris Weiss, a founder of the Holocaust Center, was a survivor dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism. His family established the award in his memory.   “As a… Read More

A survivor of Auschwitz, Sam came to this country in 1947, the only member of a large extended family to have escaped death. After many years as a shipping clerk, he finds himself frail and alone at 89, living on a modest income and the support of JFCS’ Seniors At Home program, which provides him with subsidized home care and care management.”I don’t know how I’d carry on without this help,” says Sam, who has diabetes and gout and still suffers nightmares from the war. “The people at the Seniors At Home are angels and JFCS is an absolute… Read More

Philanthropist Bill Lowenberg, who survived Auschwitz, spent much of his life educating children, grandchildren, and countless others about the lessons of the Holocaust. Now, two years after his death, his legacy lives on at the newly named William J. Lowenberg Speakers Bureau of the JFCS Holocaust Center. A significant gift from the philanthropic fund of his daughter, Susan Lowenberg, and her spouse, Joyce Newstat, ensures that young people throughout the Bay Area will hear survivors’ stories of moral courage for years to come. “The two Holocaust-related institutions that my father felt closest to were the JFCS Holocaust Center, locally,… Read More

Several hundred community members gathered at San Francisco’s Jewish Community Center (SFJCC) on Sunday, April 7,  to commemorate Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. The multigenerational participants ranged from middle school students and scholars to rabbis and Holocaust survivors. Here’s a snapshot of the day’s events, which included an art project, a reading of Holocaust victims’ names, symposia, and a worship service. San Francisco’s Yom HaShoah programs were co-sponsored by the JFCS Holocaust Center, Lehrhaus Judaica, the SFJCC, the Jewish Community Relations Council, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Anti-Defamation League. Photos by Michael Krasnobrod.  … Read More

“My students don’t know about Adolf Hitler,” says Brian Jamieson, a San Francisco teacher who works with high-risk youth . That’s why Jamieson and his students have attended the JFCS Holocaust Center’s annual Day of Learning, which brings together hundreds of students, teachers, and survivors for intensive study and discussion of the Holocaust. This year, it takes place on Sun., Mar. 17, at San Francisco’s Mercy High School. “I want my students to not only understand why Hitler was bad,” he says, “but why the Holocaust is relevant today.” JFCS Holocaust Center is Northern California’s primary resource for Holocaust… Read More