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SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
E ven years before the pandemic, finding community and ward-
ing off isolation was hard. It’s something Stacy Seltzer learned
firsthand. The founder of 3G Philly, an organization connecting the grand-
children (or third generation) of Holocaust survivors and advocating
for Holocaust education, Seltzer, 38, had trouble bringing a group
of Philadelphia 3Gs together when she moved to the area in 2012,
despite co-founding Boston 3G a few years prior.

The problem wasn’t finding young Jews with whom to gather; it
was the life stage the cohort was in: Many 3Gs, Seltzer included, had
young children and didn’t have the same spontaneity or bandwidth
to meet up with a group for a weekend gathering.

“Having the time to have a full-time job, do a full-time nonprofit,
raise a family — it’s finding that time in your life that you have the
capacity to give to it and that you have the energy to be able to attend
these events,” Seltzer said.

10 JULY 7, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
While the early days of COVID dis-
rupted the lives of so many, it also
allowed 3G Philly to begin in earnest.

“Everything started being virtual,”
she said. “So you didn’t have that same
concern about, ‘How are we going to
get everybody in a central location?’
You were able to virtually get everyone
together.” Since its April 2021 founding, 3G
Philly has amassed 215 members on its
mailing list and nine board members.

The organization has partnered with
the Holocaust Awareness Museum
and Education Center and expanded
3GNY’s We Education (WEDU) edu-
cation initiative to Philadelphia, pro-
viding training to descendants of
Holocaust survivors on how to share
their loved ones’ stories with young
audiences. Seltzer has spoken to many
Philadelphia audiences about her
grandparents’ Holocaust survival story.

Seltzer’s grandmother Esther Bratt was
born in Vilna, Poland, and was sent
with her parents to live in the Vilna
ghetto before being forced to work
at the HaKapeh Labor Camp, where
she sewed socks for Nazi soldiers. The
camp was eventually liberated, and the
family immigrated to the U.S. in 1946,
where Esther Bratt met her husband,
Sidney Bratt.

Sidney Bratt’s Guttstadt, Germany,
hometown synagogue was destroyed in
Kristallnacht in 1938, and his parents
later arranged for him, the eldest of
four children, to flee to England via
Kindertransport. He reunited with his
father after the war, and the two came
to America in 1948.

The couple eventually settled in
Reading, about an hour away from
Seltzer and her family, who live in Blue
Bell and attend Tiferet Bet Israel.

Originally from Allentown, Seltzer
attended Muhlenberg College and met
her husband at Camp Ramah in the
Poconos. They moved to New York
after college in 2006 and immediately
joined 3GNY. When they moved to
Boston a year later, they created Boston
3G hoping to recreate the warm Jewish
community they found in New York.

Boston 3G’s first event took place in
the living room of the Seltzers’ apart-
ment; they ordered pizza, and more
than 20 descendants of Holocaust sur-
vivors showed up.

“We just went around and shared our
stories,” Seltzer said. “And that ended
up turning into this amazing, amazing
group. We had various events; we had
probably several hundred people on
our mailing list; we were [featured] in
The Boston Globe.”
As 3GNY, Boston 3G and 3G Philly
continue to grow, Seltzer is working
with the various groups to create a
national umbrella organization to bet-
ter oversee programming and hold
larger-scale conferences, though the
individual branches of the organiza-
tion will remain autonomous.

As much as Seltzer is looking out-
ward to expand 3G, she’s putting just as
much effort into furthering her mission
of Holocaust remembrance within her
own home. Seltzer has three children
— ages 9, 7 and 4 — and the oldest one
is already taking on the responsibility
of learning about the Holocaust.

The work of remembering and shar-
ing the stories of the older generation
is getting more challenging. The 3G
generation is a sweet spot: Many 3Gs
enjoy close relationships with their
grandparents and learn their stories
after the survivors have had time and
space away from the trauma of the
Holocaust. Survivors may not have
been as forthcoming with information
about the Holocaust to their own chil-
dren as they were to their grandchil-
dren. Great-grandchildren may not be
as close with their survivor relatives, or
may just not have as much time with
them as their parents did.

“The 4Gs will have a similar con-
nection, where … if they’re for-
tunate enough to hear it from their
great-grandparents, then they can con-
tinue to pass down these very import-
ant stories and make sure that they’re
not forgotten,” Seltzer said.

Though heavy and important work,
it’s rewarding and grows optimism
within the Jewish community for a
better future, Seltzer believes.

“It doesn’t all have to be sad and neg-
ative,” she said. “It’s about hope, and
it’s about taking away the hatred of the
world.” JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com Courtesy of Stacy Seltzer
Stacy Seltzer



nation / world
Kosher Certification Agency Sues JetBlue, Says it Lied About a
Kosher Snack
One of the United States’ largest kosher certifying agencies alleges that JetBlue
airlines sold a snack it falsely claimed was certified as kosher, JTA reported.

In a lawsuit filed on June 23, Kof-K said JetBlue put the agency’s hechsher, or
rabbinical approval symbol, on an artichoke snack that the agency never certified.

The company that makes the artichoke snack, Elma Farms, wasn’t named in
the suit. A JetBlue spokesperson told Reuters that the airline is investigating the
claims. An attorney for Kof-K declined to comment to Reuters.

JetBlue’s $9 snack box also included products certified kosher by the Orthodox
Union, the Kashruth Council of Canada and EarthKosher.

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AI Facial Recognition IDs Rocker Geddy Lee’s Mother in Anonymous
Holocaust Photos
Rock star Geddy Lee found never-before-seen photos of his mother’s family
thanks to a new effort to apply artificial intelligence facial recognition technol-
ogy to photographs from the Holocaust, JTA reported.

Lee’s mother, Holocaust survivor Mary Weinrib, died last summer at 95. But
the researchers of the AI technology, From Numbers to Names, managed to find
a photo of Weinrib from her time at the displaced persons camp in Bergen-Belsen
— a photo that then led Lee to find other photos of his mother’s extended family
from the Yad Vashem photo collection.

Created by Daniel Patt, a Google engineer and the descendant of four Holocaust
survivors, From Numbers to Names allows users to upload a photo and then sug-
gests 10 other photos with faces that could be a match. The technology is now being
used by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s photograph collection.

Israeli Emergency Services Group Founder Accused of Sexual
Abuse Dies a Year After Suicide Attempt
A disgraced rabbi who had been awarded Israel’s highest national honor shortly
before being accused of sexual abuse and rape, including of children, has died,
JTA reported.

Yehuda Meshi-Zahav died at 62 on June 29 in Jerusalem, where he had been
hospitalized for more than a year since attempting suicide amid mounting alle-
gations against him.

Meshi-Zahav was the founder of Zaka, an emergency medical services organi-
zation that provides search-and-rescue aid after disasters around the world as well
as in Israel, where the group ensured that Jewish victims would be handled per
Jewish law. Zaka’s work made Meshi-Zahav a hero in Israel, which enlisted him to
recruit more haredi Orthodox Jews into national service and last year announced
that he would receive the Israel Prize, the country’s highest honor.

But shortly after the announcement, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported
multiple allegations against Meshi-Zahav from men and women who said they
had been raped, molested and threatened by him, some while they were teenagers.

101-year-old Former Nazi Death Camp Guard Receives Five Years in
Prison The oldest former Nazi camp guard ever put on trial in Germany was sentenced
to five years in prison, JTA reported.

Josef Schütz, 101, was found guilty of complicity in the mass murder of 3,518 prison-
ers at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, north of Berlin, between 1942 and 1945.

The presiding judge at the court in Brandenburg-Havel concluded that Schütz
was “aware that prisoners were killed there. “By your presence, you supported”
these acts, he told the accused, according to a report by Euronews and AFP.

“Anyone who wanted to flee the camp was shot. Thus, every camp guard actively
participated in the killings.”
Whether Schütz will spend any time in prison remains to be seen. The mini-
mum sentence for complicity in murder would have been three years, the reports
said. Schütz’s lawyer, Stefan Waterkamp, had said in advance that he would likely
appeal, putting off the start of a prison term to early 2023. JE
— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb
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