When Barbara Greenspan Shaiman\u2019s late mother, Carola Greenspan, arrived at Auschwitz, the Nazi\u2019s took her toothbrush.<\/p>\n
That toothbrush was her sole possession, which she\u2019d carried with her out of a Polish ghetto, where she\u2019d been taken without her parents, who\u2019d left to try to find a way for the family to escape.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Shaiman was growing up, her mother obsessively brushed her teeth five or six times a day, Shaiman told Fideri News Network<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe never understood why,\u201d said Shaiman.\u00a0<\/p>\n For years, Carola Greenspan had not wanted to return to Germany or Poland, but after a gathering of Holocaust survivors in Philadelphia in 1989, she decided to go.<\/p>\n \u201cIn two weeks, there were over 40 Holocaust survivors who signed up,\u201d said Shaiman.\u00a0<\/p>\n She accompanied her parents to the former Auschwitz concentration camp, and there her mother told Shaiman that while she was in the ghetto and on the train to Auschwitz, she would \u201c\u2018Take that toothbrush and the bristles on my teeth would make me feel human. I didn\u2019t have toothpaste, but the feel of the bristles made me feel human. It was the last thing I had left when I got to Auschwitz. They took the toothbrush away from me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Shaiman thought she might cry and left her mother to go into a nearby courtyard where she \u201cbroke down hysterically, because we made fun of her brushing her teeth, never understanding what the toothbrush symbolized for her.\u201d<\/p>\n While in the courtyard, there were some teenage boys \u201cclowning around,\u201d speaking in German. German was her first language because she was born in Germany in 1948. Her family came to the U.S. in 1951. So, she spoke to the teenagers in German, telling them this was a place where people were killed. But they ignored her and kept laughing.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I had this epiphany,\u201d she said. At that time, she ran a national search firm to recruit doctors. But Shaiman, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, decided to start a youth leadership nonprofit to promote kindness and understanding.<\/p>\n The name just came to her: Champions of Caring<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy can\u2019t we make heroes out of young people who do important social justice work, rather than just straight-A students or athletes?\u201d Shaiman asked herself.\u00a0<\/p>\n So she gave up her recruitment agency and started a nonprofit foundation to do just that. Since 1995, over 10,000 high school students from Philadelphia and the suburbs have performed one million hours of service in the region, the U.S., and abroad.<\/p>\n Her father, Henry Greenspan, and his mother, Golda, were also Holocaust survivors.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Greenspans lived in Krakow, Poland, during World War II. Henry was one of the Jews who worked for Oskar Schindler, who is famous from Steven Spielberg\u2019s film, \u201cSchindler\u2019s List.\u201d (Through a friend, NBC CEO Bob Wright, Shaiman received some seed money for Champions of Caring from Spielberg\u2019s Righteous Persons Foundation.)<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, he was not put on Schindler\u2019s List,\u201d Shaiman said of her father.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Nazis sent him on a \u201cdeath march\u201d to Theresenstadt, which was the third camp my mother was put in. That\u2019s how they met.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey both had typhus, and they were in the infirmary,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The Russian army liberated them in March 1945.\u00a0<\/p>\n Together, they went to L\u00f3d\u017a, Poland, where her mother had lived, to find her family.<\/p>\n \u201cOut of 65 people, no one was left,\u201d said Shaiman.<\/p>\n So, they went on to Krakow, and miraculously, they found that Henry\u2019s mother, Golda Greenspan, and his brother were still alive.<\/p>\n Before the war, Golda Greenspan had been an entrepreneur, which was unusual for a woman in those days. She spoke five languages and wanted to learn Italian, too. She went to Livorno, Italy, and created a business with a woman who she\u2019d contacted to teach her Italian. They sold coral, exporting it from Italy to Poland.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd she had one ring that she loved,\u201d said Shaiman. \u201cAnd when she heard rumors of Auschwitz and concentration camps and that Jews were being rounded up, she took her ring and her sabbath candlesticks to a Polish man who had worked for her and asked him to keep them for her.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen my grandmother met my mother, she said, \u2018Oh, my God. I have a ring for you!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But when she went to the man to get her ring, he claimed not to know what she was talking about. So, her grandmother went and got the police, and the man then turned over the coral ring.<\/p>\n Shaiman\u2019s mother had always valued kindness. When she was a teenager in the ghetto, she gathered up the orphaned children wandering the streets and taught them. She would always ask Shaiman what she had done to be kind to others each day.<\/p>\n When Shaiman turned 50, her mother gave her the coral ring.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time I look at it, it triggers me to think, was I kind? Would I make my mother happy?\u201d<\/p>\n Shaiman raised two children and is the grandmother of five.\u00a0<\/p>\n A study by Temple University<\/a> sociology professor Kimberly Goyette<\/a> showed that the Champions of Caring program led participants to positive impacts throughout their lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n Champions of Caring went on a hiatus in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. During that time, Shaiman expanded the organization\u2019s mission to become intergenerational.\u00a0<\/p>\n She worked with a psychology professor, Tania Giovannetti<\/a>, at Temple University to start a class on aging well, contributing to society, and social activism that had students from 19 to 95.\u00a0<\/p>\n When the course was over, people wanted more.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo, we created an intergenerational cafe,\u201d she said. They plan an international cafe in Finland, where one of her Champions of Caring, Granger Simmons, has settled.\u00a0<\/p>\n Simmons, now 42, was 15 and a sophomore at Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Philadelphia when a guidance counselor told him about Champions of Caring. He worked for the Philadelphia Mayor\u2019s Office, teaching kids computer literacy, and volunteered for the Special Olympics.\u00a0<\/p>\n While at Brown University, he became friends with a woman, who later became his wife, Odette Lee-Simmons. She is the daughter of Gerald Lee Sr., a famous American-Finnish basketball player, Gerald Lee Sr., which is how Simmons came to live in Uusikuupunki, Finland. The couple has four boys, ages 6 to 16.<\/p>\n An entrepreneur, he was running a food and beverage business.<\/p>\n \u201cNewcomers who came to this city had a lot of questions,\u201d from which carton was milk to how to bring their wife and family there, he said. Everything was written in Finnish, and most people only spoke Finnish.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was one of the only [person of color] here,\u201d he said, so people would come up to him in the streets and ask for help. He helped them as a volunteer for several years, then called the mayor and told him he should hire him to do this.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now he has a position helping immigrants and also Finns returning to their country in six municipalities. He\u2019s also in his second term on the city council.<\/p>\n \u201cChampions of Caring played a huge role in my life,\u201d said Simmons, who grew up in foster care. \u201cThey were able to see me when I felt invisible and gave me the courage to make a change in the world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And now Shaiman co-produced a new documentary that recently debuted at the Weitzman National Museum of Jewish American Histor<\/a>y: \u201cThe Coral Ring Legacy.\u201d<\/a> She\u2019s in the process of finding a streaming service to air it.\u00a0<\/p>\n