Thank you for your interest in this program. It premiered on July 20, 2021, and the recording is available on demand below. Click the play button to watch.

Panelists explored the inspiring story told in the documentary The Seven Boxes, and how preserving Holocaust evidence and researching our own family trees can deepen understanding of history.

After fleeing Nazism, many Jews concealed their identities to survive and protect their loved ones. Following the war, these Holocaust survivors and their descendants struggled to find those left behind. Learn how personal artifacts help families piece together their past.

The Seven Boxes features Dory Sontheimer, whose parents escaped Nazi Germany and raised her as a Catholic. After their deaths, she followed their trail of letters, photographs, and documents and discovered relatives in six countries.

Featured Guests

Judith Cohen

After 25 years at the Museum in pivotal roles rescuing Holocaust evidence, Judith Cohen retired in 2020, though she continues to support the revitalization of the main exhibition. Starting on a team that developed a special exhibition, she next joined Photo Archives, becoming its director in 2005. In 2015 she became the Chief Acquisitions Curator. Having personally acquired over 600 collections, her contributions have been essential to building the Collection of Record on the Holocaust.

Anna Fechter

Anna Fechter has been with Ancestry, the global leader in family history, for more than 17 years. She leads its World Archives Project, a volunteer community that helps preserve historical documents and make them available online for free. In 2011, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Ancestry created the World Memory Project that allows anyone, anywhere to help build the largest free online resource for information about victims and survivors of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution.

Bianna Golodryga

Bianna Golodryga is a senior global affairs analyst and fill-in anchor for CNN. Before that, she was co-anchor for CBS This Morning and had appeared on several other CBS broadcasts, covering many national events. She also previously co-anchored the weekend edition of ABC’s Good Morning America. Fluent in Russian, she is an expert in Russian political affairs and financial news.

Michael Gruenbaum

Michael Gruenbaum was born in 1930 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, into a family active in the Jewish community. The Nazis dismantled Czechoslovakia in 1938–39 and occupied Prague in 1939. Michael’s father was arrested by the Gestapo in 1941 and killed. Michael, his mother, Margaret, and sister, Marietta, were sent in 1942 to the hybrid camp-ghetto Theresienstadt, where they survived the war because his mother, forced to labor in the toy-making shop, repeatedly got them exempted from deportations. They lost all their relatives and immigrated in 1950 to the United States via Cuba. Michael graduated from MIT, served in the US Army, and built a government and private-sector career in city planning and public works. He and his late wife, Thelma, have three sons.

Joshua Taylor

D. Joshua Taylor, president of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, is a nationally recognized genealogical author and researcher who lectures across the globe. He is a host on the popular PBS series, Genealogy Roadshow, and a previous president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies. He believes family history goes beyond names, dates, and documents to tell the stories of our ancestors’ extraordinary lives.