Honoring Our Legacy
The Holocaust Resource Center (HRC) is the first and only of its kind in Fairfield County.
The HRC provides comprehensive resources that foster meaningful research and promote active dialogue to teach and honor the history, eyewitness accounts, and lessons of the Holocaust and to ensure that our local survivors, their families, and millions of other victims will never be forgotten. The HRC collaborates with local, state, and national partners to provide information, events, testimony, exhibits, museum visits, speakers, authors, and programs designed to reinforce ongoing Holocaust education and ensure that the survivor histories left behind are safeguarded as a shared precious legacy.
Our HRC teaches and honors the history and lessons of the Holocaust through:
- Speakers' Bureau
- Training for survivors and their descendants to learn how to document and tell their family histories
- A robust library and film collection
- Community programming and observances
- Powerful partnerships with local universities, synagogues, schools and interfaith organizations
- Interfaith allyship initiatives that foster shared understanding and collective responsibility
- Working with Holocaust Child Survivors of CT and Schoke Jewish Family Service of Fairfield County to provide social opportunities for survivors and the Second Generation
- Portal to the Fortunoff Collection of Video Testimony at Yale University Beinecke Library
Recent programs include:
Violins of Hope: Community-Wide Week of Remembrance and Resilience
The Jewish Federation proudly hosted Violins of Hope, a powerful week-long, community-wide initiative featuring 12 violins rescued from the Holocaust. These extraordinary instruments were once owned and played by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust. In some cases, they were played in concentration camps, hidden for safekeeping, or even thrown from cattle cars in desperate acts of preservation.
Each violin was meticulously restored by renowned Israeli father-and-son violin makers Amnon z”l and Avshalom Weinstein. Every instrument carries a deeply personal history — and when the violins are played, they sing their stories of loss, perseverance, and enduring hope.
Throughout the week, the violins were shared across the community, appearing in area high schools, churches, and synagogues, and featured in a Children’s Musical Experience at the Sacred Heart University Discovery Science Center and Planetarium, culminating in a moving performance by the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra. Violins of Hope engaged audiences of all ages and backgrounds, inspiring reflection, learning, and community connection.
This meaningful initiative reinforced essential lessons for our collective future. By illuminating the history of the Holocaust through music and storytelling, the program highlighted humanity’s remarkable capacity to endure and rebuild even in the face of profound darkness.
Finding My Father’s Auschwitz File: An Interfaith Evening of Memory and Discovery
In partnership with Sacred Heart University, the Jewish Federation presented a powerful interfaith reading of Allen Hershkowitz’s deeply moving memoir, Finding My Father’s Auschwitz File. The program recounted Hershkowitz’s personal journey to uncover and reclaim the lost years of his father’s life at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The story was brought vividly to life through an interfaith panel of readers that reflected the program’s spirit of shared remembrance and dialogue. Participants included author Allen Hershkowitz, Buddhist leader Gina Sharpe, Rev. Sara Smith of United Congregational Church of Bridgeport, and Sacred Heart University alumnus Alejandro Ramos.
Following the reading, attendees engaged in a thoughtful panel discussion moderated by SHU Scholar-in-Residence Professor Gary Rose, featuring Rabbi Josh Ratner of Or Hadash, Gina Sharpe, and Allen Hershkowitz.
This meaningful collaboration fostered reflection, learning, and interfaith connection, underscoring the enduring importance of preserving Holocaust history and ensuring that these stories continue to be heard by future generations.
HRC Film Series: Honoring Memory through Film
The HRC's ongoing film series features powerful Jewish and Holocaust-related works, including One Life, Orchestra of Exiles, Four Winters, and Nuremberg, often followed by audience discussions or facilitated talkbacks that deepen understanding and encourage thoughtful dialogue.
Presented in commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the films serve as a tribute to our community’s Holocaust survivors and their families. Through the lens of film and conversation, the HRC Film Series creates space for reflection, education, and collective remembrance.
By bringing the community together around these important stories, the series reinforces our shared responsibility to honor the past, uplift survivor voices, and ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust continue to resonate with future generations.
The Daffodil Project: A Living Holocaust Memorial
In partnership with Mozaic Senior Life, the HRC established a Daffodil Project garden in the Meditation Courtyard, contributing to the global effort to build a worldwide Living Holocaust Memorial. The global initiative strives to plant 1.5 million daffodils in memory of the children who perished in the Holocaust and in support of children facing humanitarian crises around the world today.
In 2023, our community planted 500 daffodil bulbs. Each spring, their vibrant blooms serve as a moving tribute to the young lives lost and as a symbol of hope, remembrance, and resilience.
The daffodils surround a powerful sculpture by Trumbull artist Sara Aldouby. The piece depicts the artist as a young child with her parents before they were taken from her and murdered in the Holocaust, creating a deeply personal and poignant focal point for reflection.
Together, this living memorial offers a space for remembrance, education, and quiet contemplation, ensuring that the memory of the children who perished continues to be honored for generations to come.
In the Garden of the Righteous: An Evening of Courage and Allyship
In partnership with The Westport Library, the HRC welcomed author Richard Hurowitz for a compelling conversation with Rev. Vanessa Rose of First Church Congregational in Fairfield. The discussion centered on Hurowitz’s Wingate Prize–nominated book, In the Garden of the Righteous, which illuminates the remarkable stories of individuals who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
More than 200 attendees gathered at The Westport Library for this meaningful program. Through powerful storytelling and thoughtful dialogue, the evening highlighted the moral courage of rescuers and the enduring importance of standing up for others in times of crisis.
The program served as a poignant reminder that allyship can provide glimmers of light even in the darkest moments, inspiring our community to carry forward the lessons of courage, compassion, and moral responsibility.
A Living Lesson: Intergenerational Learning at "Anne Frank The Exhibition"
The HRC hosted an intergenerational field trip for Holocaust survivors and their families, together with students from Merkaz to "Anne Frank The Exhibition" at the Center for Jewish History in New York City. This powerful experience gave students the opportunity to engage firsthand with the deeply moving exhibition and then reflect in personal, one-on-one conversations with survivor families.
These intimate exchanges brought history to life in a profound way, helping students connect emotionally and personally to the lessons of the Holocaust. The experience opened eyes and deepened understanding far beyond what a classroom experience alone can provide.
A special highlight of the visit was the presence of Dr. Vittoria Gassman, whose mother, Shelley Winters, won the 1959 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Petronella Van Daan in the film adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank. Her Oscar statuette, currently on display as part of the exhibit, provided an additional layer of historical and cultural significance to the day.
Through experiences like this, the HRC continues to foster intergenerational dialogue, deepen Holocaust education, and ensure that the histories and lessons of this period remain vivid and personal for the next generation.
Help Us Build a More Just and Compassionate Society for All.
Support the Holocaust Resource Center, the first and only center of its kind in Fairfield County, preserving histories, educating the community, and honoring the lessons of the Holocaust. Your donation helps fund survivor programs, community events, and educational resources that build a more just and compassionate society for all.
