William recalls the joyful celebration of Simchat Torah-the holiday marking the completion of weekly Torah readings- with Rabbi Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe, holding a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll) - in the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. The celebration took place even though the barrack was surrounded by German soldiers.

Marianna Bergida grew up with little knowledge of most of her family – her mother, sister, cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles were killed in Auschwitz when she was very young, and her father couldn’t speak about his own experiences during the Holocaust. Determined to not let other descendants of survivors lose their family history as she had, Bergida became an interviewer for the Shoah Foundation and ended up interviewing one of the real-life inspirations of Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List.