Freddie Kotek is the Senior Vice President of Investment Partnership Division at Atlas Resource Partners, L.P. Kotek is the son and son-in-law of four survivors of the Holocaust and currently sits on USC Shoah Foundation’s Next Generation Council. Kotek is actively involved at Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County, where his three daughters graduated, and currently serves on the Board of Trustees. Through a fund set up in memory of his parents, SSDS Bergen is provided with funding for all aspects of Holocaust and genocide education.

Marion remembers a big jubilation in Times Square on VE Day in New York City on May 8, 1945. Everyone was singing and dancing and many people put up their hands in the shape of a "V" for victory.

As the son of two survivors of the Shoah and the husband of a daughter of two survivors, identifying as the Next Generation has been the essence of who I am. It is the prism through which I see and evaluate all worldly events. It was particularly my father’s life that affected me the most. He truly was a “survivor." He survived the war running for his life through Russia, Siberian labor camps and other lands in Asia. He survived losing his parents, five of his sisters their husbands and children. He escaped from his hometown in the Russian sector to a displaced person camp in in the American sector. He survived as a refugee in Belgium and then as an immigrant in the United States. He survived the loss of his wife at a young age raising three children as a single parent in a foreign land.

Educators can finish the school year with a three-part online professional development course from Echoes and Reflections on teaching the Holocaust using testimony from the Visual History Archive and other primary and secondary sources.

Isabella Sayyah joined USC Shoah Foundation as a writing intern in January 2016. She graduated from USC, where she was editor-in-chief of the Daily Trojan, in December 2015 with a B.A. in International Relations and Print and Digital Journalism. She will begin attending Stanford Law School in September 2016.

Denise reflects on the night she met her husband, Ernest, at a tennis club dance after only being in England for 10 days. She says that she is glad she married a Jewish man because of his faith and values.

A few weeks ago, a student I was interviewing for a profile I was writing on him for USC Shoah Foundation’s website said something interesting: “Growing up Jewish, the Holocaust is pretty much always there.” I could identify. As someone who went to Hebrew school twice a week, every week, from the age of 5 to 13, the Holocaust was something I was always aware of. I was taught about it frequently, both in religious and regular school.