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23 April 2025
By Jamie Neumann, Third-Generation Holocaust Survivor
April 24 is Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. We are reaching a pivotal time in Holocaust storytelling. There is an unprecedented amount of Holocaust denial and antisemitism, all while there are fewer survivors still alive to tell their own stories. There has never been a better time for younger generations to share Holocaust stories, so I recently got trained through Teach the Shoah to be a third-generation storyteller.
Jamie with her grandmother, Johanna Neumann (Photo courtesy of Jamie Neumann)
My grandmother, Johanna Neumann (1930-2017), escaped Nazi Germany and went to Albania. She was protected by Muslims in Albania, who hid her from the Nazis. In Albania, they live by the moral code of Besa to save the Jews. Besa translates into “the promise,” and it means to protect your guests. The Albanian government treated Jews like guests and even gave them fake documentation to make it easier for them to hide.
After the war, many of the Jews hiding in Albania ended up in Displaced Persons (DP) camps. My grandma and her family went to one in Italy, where my grandma realized how lucky she was to have been in Albania during the war. The majority of the other people at the DP camp had been liberated from concentration camps and were actively looking to reconnect with family and friends who may have survived the Holocaust with minimal success. A few months later, my grandmother and the rest of her family got visas to move to the United States.
My grandmother spent the rest of her life traveling the world to tell her story. I now tell her story too, wherever I can, to continue with the goals and lessons that she thought were the most important: the destruction hate can cause, to honor Albania for saving Jews, the importance of the Muslim Jewish and all interfaith relationships, to look out for each other, and never forgetting the Holocaust. These lessons are encapsulated in the way that my grandmother ended all of her speeches:
“Our Talmud says that he who saves a life, it is as if he saved an entire world. Hitler tried to kill me, and now I have 4 kids, 14 grandkids, and 33 great-grandkids. This is all due to the righteous people in Albania who saved my life.”
I feel this responsibility to make sure her story is not forgotten, and I continue to work on ways to carry on her legacy and the rest of the Holocaust survivors. They did not endure and survive against all odds for their stories to be forgotten.
This is my first Yom Hashoah as a trained storyteller, and I am fortunate to have so many excellent opportunities to tell my story. On Monday, I spoke at a public library with two other excellent speakers on each of our family stories. This experience was especially incredible because we have very different stories to share with the group. On Wednesday, I spoke to healthcare system employees as part of their discussion series on race and discrimination. This opportunity is unique since it will be targeted toward non-Jews and will encompass Holocaust education with the lessons of my grandmother’s story. On Thursday morning, I am speaking to a class of 6th graders. They asked me to come speak because they are currently learning about refugees, and my grandmother’s story is about the Jewish experience of being a refugee in Albania. Finally, Thursday night, I am speaking virtually – open to the public – for Teach the Shoah. This talk will be a lesson about rescuers during the Holocaust infused with storytelling.
While I am telling my own family story, I also try to find ways to encourage and empower others to share their family stories. Together, we can ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are never forgotten.
Below are resources to share your family stories and connect with other Holocaust survivor community members:
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is a fantastic resource to build on the details of your family story that may be missing. They have three outlets to do that research:
- Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database
- Collections Search
- Connect with a Researcher (to find documentation that is not yet online)
Living Links is a national organization that offers free training for 3rd generation Holocaust survivors and has groups in many cities around the country to connect those survivors.
Teach the Shoah is another training program in which any generation can be trained to tell stories.
Jamie Neumann is also a Marketing & Communications Associate for the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington