Bonnie Abrams, Director of the Jewish Community Federation’s Center for Holocaust Awareness and Information (CHAI)
Bonnie Abrams is the Director of The Center for Holocaust Awareness & Information (CHAI) of the Jewish Community Federation of Greater Rochester. Her twenty years of volunteer work with CHAI, led to her assuming the directorship upon the retirement of previous Director, Barbara Appelbaum, at the end of 2006. She left a successful 26 year career as a professional winemaker to take on this important job. She is also the music educator at Irondequoit Hebrew Studies Center and taught a year long course on the Holocaust at Temple Beth El’s Machon Hebrew High School.
As the child of two Holocaust survivors, Bonnie grew up with the constant awareness of this dark chapter in history. Unlike many Holocaust survivors, Bonnie’s parents were able to speak about their experiences. Bonnie created an educational program called “Voice of the Second Generation” using songs she composed, Yiddish music written during the Holocaust and her parents’ testimony, to tell their stories. She presented this program at Holocaust education conferences including Yad Vashem’s “6th Annual Conference on the Holocaust and Education” in Jerusalem, Israel in July of 2008. Bonnie also keeps the legacy of pre-Holocaust Jewish life alive by performing Yiddish music. Her CD, “A Sudenyu of Yiddish Song” was displayed and sold at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM).
Since taking the directorship of CHAI, Bonnie has taken teen groups to the USHMM and sites of former concentration camps and other Holocaust atrocities in Poland. She is responsible for the planning of the community’s annual Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance) service and makes arrangements for Holocaust survivors to speak at schools and community functions. Charged with continuing the legacy of Holocaust education when there are no survivors left to speak, Bonnie arranges annual Holocaust education workshops for teachers and students from middle school through college and is working with other second generation members to help them tell their parents’ stories.
Bonnie has been a valued member of the Holocaust Study Group that formulated and planned this interfaith course. She will be your guide throughout this twelve-week course.