They had the misfortune of seeing them, swastika-bearing banners flying above the streets of their towns. They couldn’t help but hear them, youngsters their age dressed in Hitler Youth attire and singing Nazi Party anthems. “I hate the songs,” Edith Leuchter says in a video in which she and her
A group of eighth-graders at Dorseyville Middle School are volunteering their time to take others back in time to the 1940s. The school’s new LIGHT Center is hosting its first exhibit, a World War II display featuring a collection of artifacts on loan from faculty members. “The students were trained
Shulamit Bastacky believed that every child should have a teddy bear.
As a child during the Holocaust, Bastacky was hidden from the Nazis by a nun in her native Poland. She spent the first several years of her life isolated and without much human touch. Neither did she have a favorite stuffed animal to bring her comfort.
Her childhood experiences moved Bastacky, who died Jan. 1, to launch Shulamit’s Teddy Bear Project, collecting toys for children in need.
Scott Vensel, an eighth-grade language arts teacher, recalled the first time he brought Bastacky, a frequent speaker at schools, to Dorseyville Middle School in the Fox Chapel Area School District.