If You Heard What I Heard is delighted to announce its newly established nonprofit status, allowing the organization to continue capturing the stories of grandchildren of Holocaust survivors (3Gs)—the last generation to hear survivor stories firsthand. The goal of If You Heard What I Heard is to combat anti-Semitism and provide a new form of Holocaust education.
Initially launched as an independent project in April 2021, If You Heard What I Heard started in response to a rise in anti-Semitism. If You Heard What I Heard’s mission is to educate today’s generation and future generations about the Holocaust by making the stories of survivors more relatable for today. The organization seeks to curb anti-Semitism, create a world that is more empathetic, tolerant, and compassionate towards all groups of people, and live up to the promise to Holocaust survivors everywhere that the world will #NeverForget.
“As the grandchild of two Holocaust survivors,” explains If You Heard What I Heard Founder & Chair Carolyn Siegel, “it’s very scary to see a rise in anti-Semitism because they always talked to me about the importance of warning signs leading to the Holocaust being possible—a rise in anti-Semitism being one of them. When I started If You Heard What I Heard, I thought about the fact that my future children will never get to hear the stories that I heard firsthand, over the course of decades, of what my grandparents lived through, what they lost, and how they rebuilt their lives after all of that. I wanted to do something to make stories like theirs more relatable for today, and I thought, if you could hear the story from someone like me, through social media and online, in a shorter form, we could create awareness about the Holocaust to try and curb hate, not just towards Jews, but towards any group.”
In an effort to offer a different way of educating about the Holocaust, If You Heard What I Heard hopes to reach new audiences and leverage the power of storytelling to make this part of Holocaust education feel a lot more personal. As a nonprofit, the hope is to be able to scale efforts in a larger way, so that every grandchild of a Holocaust survivor who wants to share their story through If You Heard What I Heard, can do so, continuing to create widespread awareness about the Holocaust.
This is the first nonprofit of its kind to focus on capturing the stories of 3Gs—third-generation Holocaust survivors—by filming 30-minute interviews, which are available for free at www.ifyouheardwhatiheard.com.
About If You Heard What I Heard
If You Heard What I Heard is a collection of interviews of grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, recounting the pain, loss, and physical and emotional scars of their grandparents. What you’ll hear is a secondhand account of Holocaust survivors’ harrowing journeys, devastating loss and inspiring resilience. This is the first time in over 20 years that a project of this nature has been produced.
