News & Impact

Prominent Holocaust Scholar from USC Shoah Foundation, Stephen D. Smith, Ph.D., will discuss a major new initiative that takes Bay Area survivors’ testimonies to a global audience. For Immediate Release: Mon., Apr. 17, 2017 (San Francisco, CA) – Community members are invited to observe Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, on Sunday, April 23 at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. This community memorial service bears witness to those who have perished in the Holocaust and educates young people about the meaning of their legacy. This year’s observance, titled The Future of Our Past, A Conversation about Memory and Testimony,… Read More

J Weekly By Carly Nairn While most high school students wouldn’t choose to spend their weekends inside a classroom, Piedmont High School senior Danny DeBare did. The Jewish teen, along with hundreds of his peers, gathered last Sunday at a San Francisco high school to bring Jewish history into focus. “Participation is everything to get the full effect of learning the history,” said DeBare. Now in its 15th year, the Day of Learning, organized by the JFCS Holocaust Center, brought together Holocaust survivors in the Bay Area and 750 students and educators from schools in the region — from… Read More

A Legacy of Remembrance and Resilience To an observer, Zoe Goldfarb (center) and her peers look like any other group of young professionals when they get together—telling stories, sharing a meal, and catching up on each other’s lives. But this group, called 3gSF, has something very important in common. They call themselves “3Gs”—as in third generation—and they are all grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Living Links between Holocaust Survivors and Future Generations “3G is the bridge generation,” says Morgan Blum Schneider, Director of Education at the JFCS Holocaust Center, noting that they are the ones with personal relationships with both… Read More

The Mercury News By Jacqueline Lee It was her mother’s intuition that spared Denise Elbert from the gas chambers during the Jewish Holocaust in World War II. Elbert was 9 months old in 1942 when she boarded a train headed for Sobibor with her mom and dad. Young Jewish Slovakian families, like the Elberts, had been told they were needed to help build a major German city, and locals lined the platform to see them off. When Elbert’s mother spotted a good childhood friend, she decided to ask the friend to care for her daughter until the couple got settled… Read More

The Press Democrat By Christi Warren Several generations have come and gone since May 1945 when the last prisoners were liberated from the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. The Holocaust today feels far away, especially for youth increasingly separated from not only the harsh realities of a world at war, but the scope of Germany’s campaign of genocide. For years, Jewish groups have worked to bring Holocaust survivors into classrooms to discuss their time in the camps, to tell their stories. But that population is quickly dwindling — fewer than 100,000 survivors remain — which is what sparked… Read More

Do the Good Thing—Please Donate to the JFCS Annual Campaign Ida has survived many hardships in life. She survived the Nazi camps as a girl in Poland and breast cancer as a middle-aged woman living in the Bay Area. But the one thing she says she can’t survive is being separated from Saul, her husband of 58 years. Saul’s been frail since his stroke. Ida can’t take care of him on her own, and the couple does not have children. Their fixed income is extremely limited and they can’t afford home care. One bad fall, Ida fears, would mean Saul… Read More