The KHC mourns the recent passing of Stephen Berger, a Holocaust survivor and longtime volunteer with the KHC. Stephen was born and raised in Debrecen, Hungary, where he attended elementary school and Jewish Gymnasium.

After the German occupation of Hungary he was forced into the city ghetto. From there, he was sent to the Strasshof concentration camp near Vienna and then to a slave labor camp in Austria. After the liberation by Allied Forces, he briefly returned to Hungary, where he discovered the Germans and their Hungarian collaborators had murdered 26 members of his family. 

Click here to watch Stephen’s video testimony from 1985 which is part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s database.

Click here to watch Acts of Hate: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow? which featured Stephen. Recorded on May 15, 2009,  the program featured New York City officials, as well as some 200 principals and teachers from Queens public schools who participated in a special conference intended to launch the New York City Department of Education’s program for training educators to deal with hate crimes.

Click here to watch former KHC intern and QCC student, Brandon Towey, interview Stephen during the KHC’s June 2013 Holocaust Survivor Student Internship Ceremony.