Ep 88: Raised by Survivors with Bernie Furshpan and guest Gail Kastenholz on hmTv

Episode 88 – Carrying the Torch: Gail Kastenholz on Building Holocaust Education for the Future

Second–generation survivor, educator, and longtime HMTC volunteer Gail Kastenholz sits down with host Dr. Bernie Ferspan to trace a remarkable life spent turning family trauma into public service. Born to two Polish survivors who rebuilt their lives in Brooklyn and Queens, Gail explains how a single comment—“you don’t look like a 2G”—pushed her to found one of Long Island’s first children-of-survivors groups, collect testimonies with Yale’s Fortunoff Archive, and create pioneering programs that now train every Suffolk–Nassau police cadet and scores of nursing students in ethical decision-making.

From memories of Coney Island beaches and Yiddish card games to the hard facts of DP camps, lost relatives, and post-war silence, Gail reveals why Holocaust education has shifted from graphic footage to empathy-driven storytelling—and why today’s middle-schoolers may be the most engaged generation yet. If you’re curious how museums, 2G/3G activists, and October 7th have reshaped the conversation, this episode delivers a front-row seat.

Listen for:

• The birth of Long Island’s 2G movement
• Behind-the-scenes of the cadet and nursing-ethics seminars
• Tips on fostering Jewish pride and moral courage in a restless world

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Transcript

Bernie: Hello, this is Bernie Ferspan at HMTV. I’m your host of Raised by Survivors here at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center. I have a very special guest today. She heads the Center’s 2G Committee, has worked here for many years, and has done so much for the Jewish and survivor communities. Please welcome Gail Kastenholz.

Gail: Thank you, Bernie. It’s good to be here.

Growing up in New York

Bernie: Did you spend most of your life on Long Island?

Gail: No, I started out in Brooklyn—Coney Island, actually. We moved to Queens when I was six and settled in Rego Park, near Forest Hills.

Bernie: Coney Island kids always have great stories. Do you remember living that close to the beach?

Gail: Vividly. We were one block from the water, and it was wonderful back then. But once we moved, Queens became home—apartments, Jewish neighbors, Austin Street, all of that.

Gail’s Parents

Bernie: Your parents were both Holocaust survivors. Were they able to rebuild fairly quickly?

Gail: They did. My mother went back to school, earned a degree at JTS, and became a Hebrew–Judaic-studies teacher in a yeshiva—my own, actually. My father became an accountant. Both worked full-time.

Bernie: Did they lose family?

Gail: Sadly, yes—most of them. My sister was even born in a DP camp in Eschwege, northern Germany. My parents arrived in the U.S. in 1947 with the help of a wealthy relative in Brooklyn.

Bernie: Your father also opened a Jewish day school in that DP camp, right?

Gail: He did—one of the first after the war. He was the principal.

Education and Career

Bernie: You followed the family “education gene.”

Gail: (laughs) I became a speech-language pathologist, then an administrator in special education—always in the city. My daughter teaches in NYC too.

Talking—or Not Talking—About the Holocaust

Bernie: Did your parents discuss the war when you were young?

Gail: Not in detail. They spoke Polish to each other, English to me. Books and films didn’t appear until the 1980s, so there weren’t cultural cues to push the conversation. I heard fragments: life before the war, siblings who didn’t survive—but little about camp life itself.

Bernie: Same in my house. Schools didn’t teach it; parents rarely talked. We learned by watching their reactions to newsreels.

Gail: Exactly. And early “Holocaust education” was mostly piles of corpses—traumatic and ineffective. Today we focus on life before, moral choices, context.

Becoming Active: The 2G Movement

Bernie: What nudged you into Holocaust education?

Gail: A friend once said, “You don’t look like a child of survivors,” and I thought, What does that even mean? Around the same time I helped start a 2G support group at the Mid-Island JCC. We brought in psychologists, held programs, traveled to meet other 2Gs in Cleveland, Detroit, California…we’d sit in restaurants singing Yiddish songs together. There was instant camaraderie.

Bernie: That was before the museums existed.

Gail: Right—no U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, no Museum of Jewish Heritage, no HMT Center. So we partnered with Yale to videotape survivor testimonies—rudimentary equipment, but those recordings still sit in the Fortunoff Archive today. We were among the first.

45 Years of Teaching

Bernie: You’ve been doing this work forty-plus years. What changes have you seen?

Gail: Kids today are more empathetic and curious than even five years ago. Post-pandemic—and honestly, post-October 7th—they’re showing real Jewish pride and a hunger to understand hate. Statistics back it up: students with quality Holocaust education score higher on empathy and civic engagement.

Bernie: Adults are hungry too. I see it on tours.

Gail: Absolutely. When parents attend programs with their kids, the adults often ask more questions. It opens family dialogue.

Specialized Programs: Police and Nursing Students

Bernie: You also train police cadets and nursing students here. What’s that about?

Gail: The cadet program is a national ADL partnership run at only a handful of sites. Every Suffolk and Nassau recruit must come through. We explore how German police were politicized, pledged loyalty to a person instead of a constitution, and slid into perpetration. It’s not to equate; it’s to show how ordinary professionals can lose their moral compass—and how to guard against that.

For nursing students, we tackle medical ethics: what happens when doctors abandon their oath. Different content, same lesson—personal responsibility.

Legacy and the Next Generations

Bernie: What’s next for Holocaust education? Pivot—or keep at it?

Gail: Demand is higher than ever. The Anne Frank House pop-up sold out in minutes; survivors who never spoke are stepping forward. Each generation—2G, 3G—gets more engaged. Museums give people a home for memory and activism. As long as hate mutates, this work matters.

Bernie: Gail, you’ve devoted decades—hundreds, maybe thousands, of tours and workshops. You’ve made the world kinder than you found it.

Gail: I hope so. The learning never stops—for me or for the people who come through these doors.

Bernie: Gail Kastenholz, thank you for joining me on Raised by Survivors. I’m Dr. Bernie Ferspan here at HMTV. Until next time—stay well.