14 Speakers to Share Testimonies at John Carroll’s 30th Annual Holocaust Remembrance Day

Each year, The John Carroll School hosts Holocaust Remembrance Day — an opportunity for the school community to honor Holocaust victims, hear from survivors and gain an understanding of the continued impact from their families. The John Carroll School’s Holocaust education program promotes tolerance, understanding and respect among high school students of diverse backgrounds and motivates participants to make a personal commitment to combat prejudice and hatred.

The day-long program includes in-person accounts from 14 speakers, video testimonials from other survivors and children of survivors, student presentations, a reader’s theater performance and lunch for the speakers with their student guides. Event organizer Louise Géczy brings multiple survivors and second-generation speaker to share their stories with the Senior class, allowing students to learn about the variety of ways that individuals experienced the Holocaust. The significance of Holocaust Remembrance Day becomes even more acute with few remaining survivors of the Holocaust age. A list of in-person speakers is below.

The following day, the Class of 2024 will take the annual Senior trip to Washington, D.C. to the Holocaust Museum and Arlington National Cemetery. This two-prong program provides students with the opportunity to understand the impact of the Holocaust, explore the concept of genocide on a broad scale, and humanize history. John Carroll’s Holocaust programming is generously funded by the Klein Family Foundation.

According to Mrs. Géczy, “In a world where divisiveness and othering has become common, I think the more information we provide our young people about the lessons of the Holocaust, the greater chance that they will commit to make positive change throughout their lifetimes. John Carroll is committed to providing our students with multiple opportunities, both in the classroom and with special programs, to explore human rights issues.”

Among the speakers sharing testimonies are two Holocaust survivors, Esther Kaidanow and Vera Kestenberg. Despite their advanced years, both feel compelled to share their experiences so students can learn the reality of a genocide. Esther (Split, Croatia) was hidden then absorbed into partisan group, while her husband, Howard (deceased), from Bellorus/Poland, was a resistance fighter. Vera (Budapest, Hungary) spent the Holocaust in hiding with false identity; her now deceased husband was also a survivor of numerous concentration camps.

Keynote Speaker, Holocaust survivor, successful entrepreneur and author Dr. Charles Ota Heller (Czechoslovakia) will also be in attendance again this year. Dr. Heller will share his Jewish and Catholic roots and struggle to reconcile his history. Full bio below.

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Schedule of Events

9:00–10:00 a.m.: Keynote Speaker, Dr. Charles Heller
10:15–11:00 a.m.: Small Group Testimony, Session 1
11:15 a.m.–12:10 p.m.: Small Group Testimony, Session 2
12:15–1:10 p.m.: Lunch Sessions
1:15–2:15 p.m.: Large Group Session, President Steve DiBiagio

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About Dr. Heller, Keynote Speaker

Dr. Charles Ota Heller’s career has consisted of six phases: student-athlete, engineer, educator, entrepreneur, venture capitalist and writer. He is the author of five memoirs: award-winning "Prague: My Long Journey Home;" "Dlouhacesta domu (in Czech);" "Name-Droppings: Close Encounters with the Famous and Near-Famous;" "Ready, Fire, Aim! An Immigrant’s Tales of Entrepreneurial Terror;" and his latest–publication, "Cowboy from Prague: An Immigrant’s Pursuit of the American Dream."

Dr. Heller was born in 1936 in Prague, three years before the Nazis invaded his native country. Raised a Catholic, he was unaware of the fact that the Germans classified him a Jew, due to the fact that he had three Jewish grandparents. One by one, his relatives disappeared, taken away by transports to extermination camps. His Jewish father escaped and joined the Czechoslovak Brigade of the British army. Soon only he, his mother and his great-grandfather were left. When the Nazis took over the family’s factory and threw them out of their home, they were taken in by a farmer couple. A year later, Dr. Heller’s great-grandfather was taken away, too. His heroic mother survived questioning, racial trials and torture while protecting her only son. Eventually, she was taken away to a slave labor camp for Christian wives of Jewish men. Prior to leaving, she hid her son with farmer friends. He remained in hiding until the end of the war. When the Germans were finally defeated and were escaping the country, nine-year-old Charlie came out of hiding and shot a Nazi with a pistol he found in a ditch. He was elated and proud of the fact that he had helped his father win the war. His dad, Rudolph, came home a war hero. His mother, Ilona, escaped from the camp and reunited with her family. Sadly, they were the only survivors of the war and the Holocaust; 25 members of the family perished.

Freedom for the Hellers lasted less than three years because in February 1948, Soviet-led Communists took over the government and declared Dr. Heller’s parents “enemies of the state.” Following a harrowing escape over the border into the U.S. Zone of Germany, the family spent 15 months in refugee camps while waiting for a visa to enter the United States. They arrived on board a Liberty ship in New York harbor in May 1949 and settled in New Jersey.

Despite the fact that he had had less than three years of formal schooling in Europe, he did well in high school and entered Oklahoma State University as an engineering student. At OSU, he earned a basketball scholarship, and graduated with bachelor's and master's degrees. Early in his career, he was an engineer and went on to lecture at UCLA to later became the youngest tenured faculty member in the history of the U.S. Naval Academy. He earned a Ph.D. in engineering from The Catholic University of America and then co-founded CADCOM, Inc., a pioneer CAD/CAM software company; he was its President and CEO. When CADCOM was acquired by ManTech International Corporation, Charlie became Vice President for Corporate Development of the parent firm. In 1983, he led a management buy-out of a segment of ManTech’s business which became InterCAD Corporation. He wasPresident and CEO of InterCAD until he sold his interest in the company. He returned to academia as Director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, where he built one of the nation’s top-ranked entrepreneurship centers. He left academia to become a partner in Gabriel Venture Partners, an early-stage, bi-coastal, venture capital fund. Later, Dr. Heller became Director and Investment Chair of Athlone Global Security, a ninternational venture capital firm investing in early-stage companies in the homeland security sector.

Dr. Heller is an internationally recognized lecturer on entrepreneurship, and he was a freelance writer and columnist for more than 20 years. His accolades include:

• Maryland Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young, Inc. magazine
• One of “The 50 Most Influential People in Southern Technology” by digitalsouth magazine
• First-ever Professor of Practice at the University of Maryland
• Lohmann Medal by Oklahoma State University, and elected to the school’s Hall of Fame
• Alumni Achievement Award from The Catholic University of America
• One of “Computer Graphics Pioneers” 
• Board member at Walden University and the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library

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Expected Guests

• Richard Grilli, Second Generation (Baltimore, MD): Richard’s mother, from Chotebor, Czechoslovakia, was rescued by Sir Richard Winton on last train transport of children to England
• Nancy Kutler, Second Generation (Baltimore, MD): Shares her mother’s story of Kristallnacht, followed by four years in various ghettos and concentration camps
• Steve Salzberg, Second Generation (Baltimore, MD): Tells his father’s story and speaks on trans-generational trauma
• Lola Hahn, Second Generation (Baltimore, MD): Tells mother and aunt’s stories who were saved by Oskar Schindler
• Esther Kaidanow, Survivor (Split, Croatia; formerly Yugoslavia): Hidden then absorbed into partisan group
• Alana Snyder, Third Generation (Baltimore, MD): The granddaughter of two Holocaust survivors, she tells her grandmother’s story
• Jessica Silverman, Third Generation (Pikesville, MD): Shares her grandmother’s story, who survived a ghetto and four concentration camps, including Auschwitz
• Lynn Farbman, Second Generation (Greece): Born in a concentration camp
• John Carroll President Steve DiBiagio, Second Generation (Baltimore, MD): Shares his father’s American GI story of the liberation of Ahlem Camp
• Anne Pfeffer, Second Generation (Baltimore, MD): Born in a displaced persons camp after the war, her parents were Holocaust survivors
• *Claudia Andorsky, Second Generation (Ellicott City, MD): Born in a displaced persons camp after the War, Claudia’s parents were Holocaust survivors
• *Herbert Hane, Survivor (Giessen, Germany): Raised Catholic, Herbert experienced Kristallnacht, persecution and life under Hitler
• *Sheryl Reicher, Second Generation (Owings Mills, MD): Following the death of her grandparents, Sheryl’s parents met and married in a displaced persons camp in Poland
• *Sara Silverman, Second Generation (Owings Mills, MD): Shares the story of her mother, born in Poland, who ran away to Russia at 17-years-old when the Germans invaded. Her mother hid and survived the war alone, homeless and subjected to forced labor, as her family was murdered.
• Bob Lowy, Second Generation (Owings Mills, MD): His mother was from former Czechoslovakia and survived three concentration camps. Following the War, she fled to Ecuador for two years until she could immigrate to the U.S.
• Berly Hershkovitz, Second Generation (Stevenson, MD): Tells the story of her mother who was born in Ukraine and spent three years hiding from the Nazis with her family

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