Holocaust Center presents Generations Speakers Series, sharing stories of survivors and their families
Melissa Marks: “I look at the people who saved my mother and my grandmother. They did an extraordinary thing."

Clare Drobot’s grandparents, Wanda and Jan Drobot, originally from Poland, survived the Holocaust, but Drobot did not uncover her family’s Jewish heritage until she was 18.
“My grandparents raised my father and his sister as Catholic, and that was the background that I understood our family to have,” Drobot said. “But when my grandmother passed away, this much deeper, more expanded understanding of my heritage came out.”
Over the years, Drobot learned more about her family’s stories by researching the Holocaust and finding archives across the United States and Poland, she said. She continues to work with her father and other family members to learn more about her family history.
“There are pieces of their story I still don’t know the details of,” Drobot said. “I still don’t know the full extent of their experiences, and those are the things that can be lost between generations.”
Drobot will tell her family’s story on June 18 as part of the Pittsburgh Holocaust Center’s Generations Speaker Series in Chatham University’s Mellon Board Room at 6 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public.
The Generations Speaker Series shares the stories of Holocaust survivors and their families with students, businesses and community organizations. The speeches educate listeners on the horrors of the Holocaust and shed light on how people in the Pittsburgh community were directly affected.
Drobot first connected with the center while working with the organization on a project for City Theatre Co., where she is the co-artistic director. After being invited to learn more about the center’s work, she found a sense of community through the Generations program, she said.
Drobot wants to continue sharing her family’s story to prevent it from “being erased, forgotten and lost to the past,” she said.
“It means a lot to bring their names back into existence,” Drobot continued. “I think, certainly, our history informs the present. It’s about the importance of understanding our families and the way in which history has shaped our lives and how complicated that legacy can be.”
Melissa Marks, a professor of education at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, will continue the Generations series on July 18 by speaking about her mother, grandparents and extended family members’ experience during the Holocaust.
Originally from what was then Czechoslovakia, Marks’ grandparents moved to Belgium in 1939 and welcomed their daughter — Marks’ mother — in 1941.

After escaping from the camp, Marks’ mother lived with a Catholic family who selflessly took her in while her grandmother remained in hiding.
Meanwhile, her grandfather was sent to four different camps, including Auschwitz. He survived the camps, and her family reunited and moved to the United States after the war.
Marks said sharing the story of her family and other Holocaust survivors can show how “ordinary individuals can do extraordinary things during difficult times.”
“One of the main reasons we study history in general is so we can learn from what other people did well,” Marks said. “I look at the people who saved my mother and my grandmother. They did an extraordinary thing. They stood up at the risk of not only their own lives, but saving my mother — who was a complete stranger — put their own daughter at risk.”
She cautioned, however, that the lessons of the Holocaust cannot be taught through a single story.
“I think that there is danger in a single story,” Marks said. “Every story is different and understanding why people did what they did and how we can emulate the good and repel the bad in our own lives and our own actions is so important.”
Emily Loeb, the Holocaust Center’s director of programming and education, began her work with the center as a Generations speaker in 2018.
“Our speakers bureau continues to grow, and over the years it’s grown as people have become aware of this teaching opportunity that the Holocaust Center provides,” Loeb said. “This year, our Generations speakers presented to over 7,500 people.”
The Holocaust Center looks to expand further by adding speakers who can share different aspects of the Holocaust, Loeb said.
“I think it’s really important to connect history to real people,” Loeb said. “I’ve had so many situations where I’ll be talking in a class or to a group of students, and someone will say, ‘I’ve studied the Holocaust before, but I’ve never met someone whose family was actually affected by it.’ I think it personalizes history in a really profound way and allows people to translate what they’re learning in a book or seeing on a screen to a real person.” PJC
Kathleen Gianni can be reached at kgianni@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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