Yesterday we observed Yom HaShoah, remembering the six million Jews who perished during the Holocaust.

More than 70 years after the Shoah, we’re approaching a time when firsthand witnesses to the Holocaust will no longer be with us to share their stories. And as time passes so does collective memory.

The New York Times reported yesterday on a shocking survey released by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. Among their findings: “Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was.”

There’s a sense of urgency here. While survivors still live, we need to help them tell their stories and transmit their memories to younger generations.

To that end, UJA-Federation has long supported Witness Theater, a program run through Selfhelp Community Services and developed by JDC-Eshel in Israel. We’re also grateful to the Jewish Communal Fund and the Claims Conference for supporting these efforts.

Survivors meet with teens over the course of eight to nine months, telling their stories — a therapeutic process for some who may have never before spoken publicly about their trauma. The teens from nine schools across the New York area, including public, private, and Jewish day schools, learn to reenact the stories, which they perform in the days around Yom HaShoah. Essentially, they take on the role of “witness” for their elderly counterparts.

An incredibly beautiful bond is forged between the adults and students, often extending far beyond the period of the program. Older people who find their worlds narrowing at this point in life are deeply fulfilled by the connection to the teens. The teens become the trustees of precious stories, theirs to tell and retell for years to come.

This year, over the course of 13 performances, the stories will be told to 5,200 audience members and many others through livestreaming. Witnesses and more witnesses emerge.

To understand the full power of the program, I’d like to share a letter written by a UJA supporter whose daughter was a past participant in Witness Theater. When one of the survivors from her daughter’s group recently passed away, the mother attended the funeral, as her daughter couldn’t be there herself. She writes:

I had the privilege of attending the funeral of Brian, a participant in Witness Theater. He was 94 years old.

What was remarkable and indelible was what the room at Riverside Chapel looked like. First, it was full, which is not always the case when someone so elderly passes. Most people there were old. Some very old. And then there were four rows of teenagers. I believe that each and every one of the Witness Theater participants who was still in New York attended, minus only those who are in college.

Four rows of teenagers from the Abraham Joshua Heschel School and Trinity School, together with some of the Selfhelp staff, all sat together. The kids weren’t with parents and no one made them attend. In tears, nodding, they knew all of the stories that were told. When Brian’s deaf brother approached the podium to offer a eulogy that he signed and spoke, and which was spoken more clearly by Brian’s daughter, we all knew that he’d become deaf while in the ghetto and was hit over his head. This was part of Brian’s Witness Theater narrative.

I watched as these kids remained afterward and spoke and held and hugged the three or four other Witness adults, survivors who also attended Brian’s funeral. They were amazing.

This program has been a gift to the students. They were challenged to match maturity to memory — and they have. Today I saw how much it means to the elderly participants. It was beyond description.

I am certain these teens will never forget. Not Brian, not his story, and not the lessons he imparted.

May his memory and the memory of the six million stay with us always.

Shabbat shalom