Holocaust survivor ‘wisdom project’ launched in Los Angeles

After working for the Holocaust Museum LA for over 10 years, Chief Impact Officer Jordana Gessler is taking a new approach with her colleagues to collecting stories from Holocaust survivors.

The “Holocaust Survivor Wisdom Project” is an interview-based effort aimed at collecting the wisdom and perspectives that the Holocaust survivor community has to offer. Rather than focusing on direct experiences from the Holocaust, the project was designed with unique interview questions that foster life reflections, teachings, and “ethical wills.”

“The project stems from this idea around ethical wills, which are a very Jewish concept in nature,” Gessler said. “It’s basically this idea of not the physical aspects that a person leaves behind, but their personal values, beliefs, life lessons, wishes, and wisdom that they’re leaving behind for others in the community to steward and hold.”

Additionally, the interviews are short, usually around 30 minutes, taking into account that survivors are elderly and English is not their first language. Examples of questions include “What has been a blessing in your life?” and “What is a piece of wisdom you would give to the younger generation?”

While initially designing the project earlier this year, Gessler sat down with her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, to try out some of the interview questions. This “eye-opening” interaction ended up shaping a lot of the questions that are now standard in the project.

Gessler explained that she thought she knew everything about her grandmother before the interview, but she was surprised by some of the responses. By the end, she felt that she had learned something new.

“My connection to this project has definitely evolved and changed,” said Gessler. “I’ve seen firsthand not just how creating an ethical will is deeply reflective for the survivors themselves but also allows the community to receive the essence of who they are and what they stand for.”

Once the interviews are collected and ready to be made available to the public, the museum hopes to make them as accessible as possible. The museum has the goal of being ready by the end of the year.

The museum's initiatives

While the museum has already conducted over 100 interviews, the second priority is making a template-like “toolkit” that can be given to other Holocaust institutions globally, enabling communities to go through the same process of collecting and cataloging interviews as “primary sources” with survivor communities.

The Holocaust Museum LA museum has already begun this process with partners in Atlanta and New Zealand.

Gessler explained that this was a pivotal moment to be interacting with Holocaust survivors. “We are at this crux between the way in which we’ve been interacting with Holocaust education and commemoration and how we will be forced to interact with it in 10-15 years from now,” she said.

The museum has a strong base of survivors it has been working with, but it is also reaching out to organizations that work as caregivers with survivors and following up with those who have donated to the museum.

The museum has also used word of mouth throughout the community. Extensive research and even cold-calling were utilized to find new survivors.

Gessler added that the museum managed to add two new survivors through its outreach: Susanne Reyto and Erika Fabian.

Reyto, who said she always likes to look toward the future with a positive attitude, said, “It was presented to me as a project that is not for the past but for the future.”

Reyto was born shortly before the Nazi occupation of Hungary and lived with her mother under protective papers from the Swedish and Swiss legations. However, their living conditions were in damp basements, with the young Reto suffering from colds and pneumonia. She eventually escaped from communist Hungary in the late 1950s and grew up in Australia.

Fabian, a regular public speaker at the Holocaust Museum LA, noted that usually, when she speaks about her Holocaust experiences, people look at her with utter amazement.

Fabian’s mother managed to secure false papers for the family, enabling them to survive under Christian identities. However, Fabian’s father did not survive the war.

Leaving Hungary in 1956, Fabian developed a successful career in theater, writing, and photography.

Reyto, Fabian, and Gessler emphasized that a project like this is now more important than ever, considering the recent surge of antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

Also noting the aging survivor community, Gessler said she couldn’t think of a more “crucial” time for the project. “These are the final moments that we can take time to reflect and learn from people who personify human resilience,” she said. “We can consider what that means for us and for the future and really be stewards of this legacy.”

The museum is seeking survivors interested in participating in the project. These recordings will be preserved in Holocaust Museum LA’s oral history archive.

The interview process is no longer than 90 minutes. It will be recorded and take place in the museum, at home, or at an alternate comfortable location.

Individuals interested in participating in the project should contact whitney@hmla.org. Eligible participants include survivors, people with a Holocaust survivor in their life whom they would like to interview, and organizations wishing to interview survivors in their communities.

The Holocaust Survivor Wisdom Project is made possible in part through the support of the Illuminate Foundation.