Ruth Kapp Hartz<\/a> visited his school in Northeast Philadelphia.<\/p>\n ![\"Holocaust](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778014390_353_.jpeg\"\/)
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Holocaust survivor Ruth Hartz speaks to students at the annual Teen Symposium on the Holocaust.<\/p>\n
She told the students about how as a 4-year-old, she and her family went into hiding in France. They changed her name to Renee to disguise her Jewish identity, as she hid on a farm and eventually in a Catholic convent.<\/p>\n
More than 30 years after she visited the school in Philadelphia, her story still sticks with Massa, now a history and civics teacher at East Stroudsburg High School North. On Tuesday, he brought some of his students to hear Hartz speak in Scranton.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a full circle moment for me to see my students get to hear her speak in the same way that I got to hear her speak,\u201d Massa said. \u201cIt is incredibly important. There’s growing hate and antisemitism in this world, and there’s growing Holocaust denial, unfortunately. So these stories are just as important now as they ever were, and the oral histories are incredibly important. People need to hear first-hand accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Massa and his students posed for a photo with Hartz after her session.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m very glad that she’s able to come,\u201d said senior Dylan Krumanocker. \u201cThat’s a very important thing that needs to be talked about, and people should know.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"East](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778014391_804_.jpeg\"\/)
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Sarah Hofius Hall<\/p>\n
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WVIA News <\/p>\n
East Stroudsburg High School North teacher Anthony Massa and his students pose for a photo with Holocaust survivor Ruth Hartz.<\/p>\n
Realizing the importance<\/p>\n
Dahme and her sister reunited with their parents after the war. Her parents lived in an attic for three years to avoid capture. Most of their extended family, including three grandparents, an aunt, uncle and cousins, were murdered by the Nazis at the Sobibor death camp.<\/p>\n
The family moved to America in 1950. Dahme leads an annual tour of Holocaust sites in Europe and last year, received the royal decoration of knight in the Netherlands, in recognition of her commitment to Holocaust education.<\/p>\n
About 800 students attended the symposium on Tuesday, and another 600 will attend Wednesday. The event is coordinated through the Holocaust Education Resource Center of the Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always say to the kids the impact this has on them may not be felt today or tomorrow, but somewhere down the line, all of a sudden, they’re going to think about what they heard here and realize how important it was,\u201d Connors said.<\/p>\n
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Students walk under an arch that reads ‘Work sets you free,’ a German phrase that was posted at entrances of concentration camps.<\/p>\n
Aimee Dilger \/ WVIA News<\/p>\n
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Teacher Leslie Kotcho and her student, sophomore Shaliyah Brown, look at Holocaust artifacts. <\/p>\n
Aimee Dilger \/ WVIA News <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Maud Dahme, survival meant staying hidden. She was 6 and her sister 4 when their parents sent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-184673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Peter](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778014389_143_.jpeg\"\/)
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