Memoria [EN] No. 22 (07/2019) | Page 35

The Holocaust survivor passed away in 2011, and Stoll realized that she never told Freibrun’s story. There were stories to be told. At Café Europa, Stoll saw Freibrun’s face in all of the survivors - and she knew that the event was more than just a celebration.

Since the JCC gathering two years ago, Stoll has made 16 different documentary videos. In the longest, the 24-minute New York Emmy-winning film “Where Life Leads You," she took on the extremely difficult task of relating the historical arc of the Holocaust and its entire timeline through 10 unique and geographically disparate stories. The result is seamless, mesmerizing and, at times, devastating. The other 15 mini-documentaries are the individual stories of Holocaust survivors who eventually moved to America and built joyful lives on Staten Island. The videos confront intolerance and its horrifying potential. They are historical, but urgently told and heart-wrenchingly vivid. And they find inspiration and grace in one of the darkest eras of the 20th century.

The Claims Conference, an organization dedicated to providing a measure of justice for Jewish Holocaust survivors and to provide them with care, has released some startling statistics: 11 percent of American adults and over a fifth of Millennials do not know about the Holocaust, and 66 percent of Millennials have never heard of Auschwitz.

It was after these numbers were made known that the “Where Life Leads You” project, created by Stoll (who is a Millennial), grew into a teaching tool for New York City public and Catholic schools on Staten Island.

The work has been introduced to grades 4-12 through presentations and in-classroom viewings of the films. The goal has been to teach the Holocaust to Staten Island students, using vivid accounts given by those who survived and now live in their community. And it is our hope that the stories, recounted to these students by their neighbors, will ensure that the forgotten borough will be a place that will always remember.

The project is available for viewing at

https://holocaust.silive.com/