David Halpern (2G)

Dr. David Faust Halpern is the son of two Holocaust survivors. After his parents fled postwar Asia, he was born in France, and the family emigrated to the United States in the early 1950s. He is honored to share the remarkable survival story of his mother, Rosette (Rozia) Faust Halpern. In 2013, her memoir A Journey Through Grief: A Testament to Tragedy, Resilience, and Perseverance, was published. It recounts her family life and childhood and culminates in the devastating years of the Holocaust, during which nearly the entire Jewish community of Rohatyn, Poland, including her parents, relatives, and friends, was murdered. His presentation focuses on the events beginning in June 1941 in Rohatyn.

 Allison Baumwald (3G)

Allison has been working in the fundraising field for over 20 years, primarily for The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore.  During her tenure there, she led the Annual Campaign, raising over $30 million annually, Women's Philanthropy, Major Gifts, Business and Professionals affinity groups and several special campaigns. She currently lives in Baltimore with her husband, Adam, and two daughters, both of whom attend Jewish Day School. Allison will share the story of her grandmother, Helen Solarz Sadik, which she will tell from the first person as if she were her grandmother.  Helen was born in 1920 in Varka, Poland and was the youngest of four daughters.  Her father died before she was born and she was raised by her mother, a very strong, religious woman.  She was living with her mother in Varka when the war broke out.

Dylan Rauseo (4G)

Dylan Rauseo is a junior at The Park School of Baltimore, where he is a leader of the Jewish Student Union. He became a Teach the Shoah storyteller in April of 2025 through which he tells the story of his great-grandmother, Lina Koulias, who passed away in 2021, at the age of 93. He became interested in her story in 2022, when he created an 18-minute documentary to honor her memory for his bar mitzvah project. Lina, who Dylan called Yaya, grew up in Corfu, Greece, and survived several concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, as a teenager. She and her husband moved to the United States in 1951 with their 2-year-old daughter, Esther (Dylan’s grandmother).