Holocaust survivor Mrs. Lee Lichtman is featured in this year’s “Names, Not Numbers” documentary. She is pictured with YUHSG seniors Leora Ciment, Miriam Radinsky, Sara Teitelman, Ronit Landsman, and Deena Motechin
Holocaust survivor Mrs. Lee Lichtman is featured in this year’s “Names, Not Numbers” documentary. She is pictured with YUHSG seniors Leora Ciment, Miriam Radinsky,
Sara Teitelman, Ronit Landsman, and Deena Motechin
Holocaust survivor Mrs. Iti Landau is pictured with YUHSG seniors Maya Zar, Tovah Blank, Aviva Landau (her granddaughter), and Zavi Lava. Also pictured are program coordinator Rabbi Josh Strulowitz, assistant principal Bracha Rutner, and program creator Mrs. Tova Rosenberg

On the evening of Thursday, April 27, Central seniors and their families were proud to participate in the culminating event of this year’s Names, Not Numbers program. Created by Tova Rosenberg, the program transforms the teachings of the Holocaust by taking it beyond traditional classroom walls and turning it into an interactive, creative, and empowering educational lesson with students.

Names, Not Numbers offers an integrated, multidisciplinary curriculum, combining research through a custom-made website, interviewing techniques, documentary film tools, and editing. Throughout the project, the students work with professionals–journalists or newspaper editors, a filmmaker, and history teachers–who prepare them for making their oral history film documentary. The crux of the project is the one-hour film interview that each group of students conducts with either a Holocaust survivor or a World War II veteran. These interviews are then edited down by the students into 15-minute segments and combined into the documentary film Names, Not Numbers, which will ultimately become a permanent resource in the archives of Holocaust museums and academic institutions.

This year marks the eleventh “Names, Not Numbers” program at Central and MTA, and the first time Central students have had the opportunity to work with the filmmaker to learn how to use the professional editing programs used by documentary filmmakers. At last week’s culminating program, Head of School CB Neugroschl welcomed over 300 people to dinner and to a viewing of the Class of 2017’s documentary. In the audience were participating students, Holocaust survivor interviewees, and their families. As the student representative, Leora Ciment (’17) shared her experience as part of the program and the lessons she knows she will take with her throughout her life. Documentary filmmaker and director Mikaela Floom recorded the students, teachers, and interviewees throughout the production of Names, Not Numbers. These clips, together with the student-edited interviews, comprised the content of Names, Not Numbers: A Movie in the Making. The main event of the evening featured a screening of this documentary.

Holocaust scholar, Emmy-winning documentarian, and former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Dr. Michael Berenbaum expressed his praise for the Names, Not Numbers program: “Names, Not Numbers is a unique, imaginative, and creative project . . . The best learning is active learning, and it’s a fabulous educational opportunity for students to have this intergenerational dialogue with survivors. It’s truly a mitzvat aseh she’ha’zeman grama since they won’t have this opportunity again, even ten years from now. The project really works and what they produce is terrific.” Program creator Mrs. Tova Rosenberg notes the incredible impact of the program on the students who participate: “The project is life-changing for them. They tell me that the survivor they interviewed is their role model and every word said is embedded into their minds. They understand that this is for posterity and they will have responsibility of telling these stories in the future. They really rise to the occasion and are proud of what they do.”

To date, 5,000 students have successfully interviewed and filmed 1,500 survivors and WWII veterans throughout the U.S., Canada, and Israel. All of the 150 documentary films have been accepted into the archives of the Jewish National and University Library of Israel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In addition, they are being archived at Yad Vashem and the Gottesman Library at Yeshiva University.

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