In Episode 487 of Education in Motion on hmTv, host Zachary Graulich, Assistant Director of Education at the @hmTv-hmtc Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, sits down with Dr. Janet Brill, bestselling author and researcher, for a powerful conversation about memory, resilience, and the responsibility to bear witness.
The Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County
Dr. Brill shares the extraordinary story behind her book Little Edna’s War, which recounts the remarkable survival of her mother-in-law, Edna. Born in Warsaw in 1934, Edna endured the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto, survived on the Aryan side under a false Catholic identity, and joined the Polish Home Army as a courier, fighting the Nazis at just nine years old.
Drawing from extensive historical research and testimony recorded by the USC Shoah Foundation, Dr. Brill wrote the memoir in Edna’s voice to ensure that her story would never be lost.
In this moving episode, Zachary and Janet explore the power of personal testimony in Holocaust education, the importance of confronting hate and indifference, and the responsibility of future generations to continue telling these stories. Through Edna’s remarkable courage and the life she built after the war, listeners are reminded that resilience, gratitude, and moral courage can shape history.
ABOUT LITTLE EDNA’S WAR
Foreword by Dr. Michael Berenbaum Smuggler at 7. Resistance fighter at 9. Prisoner of war at 10. A Jewish girl who made history and survived to tell it.
On September 1, 1939, German bombs shatter a birthday party in Warsaw. Edna Szurek is four years old. It is the last moment of her childhood. In Little Edna’s War, Janet Bond Brill follows Edna from the starvation of the Warsaw Ghetto through escape to the Aryan side under a false Catholic identity. Interrogated at the Gestapo’s Aleja Szucha, she learns the rule: never admit you are Jewish. Her journey continues through armed resistance with the Polish Home Army, the Warsaw Uprising, the Wola Massacre, and captivity at Oberlangen, the only Nazi camp for female prisoners of war. Liberated before her eleventh birthday, blessed by a Pope who never knew she was Jewish, and hidden inside a stolen identity in an English convent for four years after the war ended, Edna’s story is the Holocaust as one child lived every stage of it, and the long, fierce road back to herself.
ABOUT JANET BOND BRILL
Janet is a professional public speaker as an established author of four top selling books with Random House and Wiley. She’s also a former college professor with academic credibility and educational experience. Having someone with a proven ability to effectively communicate complex historical narratives while sharing a very personal story is critical. Janet has twice presented to Powell-Heller Holocaust Education Conference at Pacific Lutheran University and has pending talks at International March of the Living, Seattle Holocaust Center – Holocaust For Humanity in Seattle, Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County, AJL Conference Association of Jewish Libraries and Jewish Book Council partners.
