Maddy Kramer, producer and editor of The Last Generation, will moderate a live recording of her podcast with Mark Schonwetter, a member of the Museum’s Speakers Bureau, and his family.

In The Last Generation, Kramer facilitates interview-style conversation between survivors and their families, especially grandchildren. This brings an intimate and personal approach to survivor storytelling, with an eye toward the next generation, who have an opportunity to learn more about their past and consider their future.

Listen to season two of The Last Generation on Spotify & Apple Podcasts. The podcast is produced and edited by Maddy Kramer & Pickle Music.

Doors open at 12:30 PM. The Museum is free with event attendance on Sundays until 5:00 PM with Jewish and Russian fare on offer from LOX Cafe. Currently on view: The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do, Survivors: Faces of Life After the Holocaust, and Andy Goldsworthy’s Garden of Stones.

Mark Schonwetter was a young child in Brzostek, Poland when the Nazis invaded, and his family was forced out of their home. After his father, who was the head of the Jewish community, was taken by the Gestapo, Schonwetter’s mother, Sala, fled with him and his sister to a nearby ghetto. After narrowly escaping the ghetto extermination, the family went into hiding in the Polish countryside, where they remained for three years. They spent those years hidden in the forest during tropical seasons and were given refuge by different farmers during colder seasons. By the end of the war, Schonwetter was one of only a few surviving Jews from Brzostek. He ultimately emigrated from Poland to the United States in 1961 and found work in a jewelry factory. Within 10 years, he had the opportunity to purchase another jewelry company. He sold his company in 2011 and remained in the jewelry business until he retired in 2018.

Maddy Kramer is a Creative Director in advertising in New York and granddaughter of Holocaust survivor, Susana Szego. Regretting that she didn’t have the chance to know her grandmother’s story, Kramer created The Last Generation Podcast to tell survivors’ stories with their grandchildren.

Watch here: