Too “traumatized after the war,” Marsha Kreuzman didn’t discuss her Holocaust experiences for nearly 30 years. “I cannot actually tell you what date motivated me, but I woke up and said, ‘the world has to know what we went through,’” she recalls. The younger generation had to hear the story.

Thirteen-year-old Matt Survis was one of her most eager listeners. Through a Federation program that pairs, or “twins,” survivors with b'nai mitzvah students, Matt learned all about what Marsha, now 91, experienced: her imprisonment in the Plashov labor camp in Poland for four years, where she had only rags to protect her from frigid snowstorms; the “mountains of dead people” she saw when she arrived at Auschwitz; how cold the crematorium door at Mauthausen felt against her cheek; and the indescribable feeling of liberation in May 1945.

Education into Action

Feeling a deep responsibility to ensure that his and future generations knew her story, Matt has put Marsha’s mission into action. In eighth grade, he developed a curriculum to teach his fellow students about the Holocaust and the stories of Holocaust survivors. At college, he founded the Upstander Initiative, a nonprofit that works in schools to humanize the Holocaust through individual stories, discuss the enduring problems of genocide and teach students to recognize prejudice in their own communities.

Now 19, Matt still has a deep connection with Marsha. “She comes over for holidays, graduations, and birthday celebrations,” he says. “We end our weekly phone calls with three words: I love you. I am so very fortunate to have Marsha in my life.”