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Influential Origins | Ep. 714: Andrea Bolender, Returning to Poland, Part 2 | HMTC

Andrea Bolender returns to Poland not as a tourist, but as a daughter tracing the footsteps of a father whose childhood and family were stolen by the Holocaust.

In Part 2 of Influential Origins, host Alan Mindel speaks with Andrea about the March of the Living, meeting Dana Arschin Kraslow, and the urgency of documenting the remaining survivors. Andrea reflects on marching from Auschwitz to Birkenau and returning each year so the memory of what happened there remains alive.

Her journey leads to the POLIN Museum, her father’s hometown of Chizhev, the family butcher shop, their former home, and the train station where a curator hoped to create an exhibit about the town’s Jewish community. A visit to Babyn Yar further deepened her commitment.

Their conversation explores identity, rediscovered Jewish ancestry, changing relationships in Europe, visible Jewish pride, and contemporary antisemitism. Andrea’s message is clear: memory survives only when people return, document, teach, and refuse to hide who they are.

Influential Origins on hmTv | Host: Alan Mindel | Guest: Andrea Bolender
A production of the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County

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CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction
0:22 The March of the Living and Meeting Dana
2:51 Why Andrea Returns Each Year
3:18 Jewish History at the POLIN Museum
4:15 Identity and Inherited Prejudice
5:28 Returning to Her Father’s Hometown
7:41 Jewish Life and a Changing Europe
8:03 Babyn Yar and Memory in Ukraine
8:55 Faith, Antisemitism, and Visible Identity
10:04 Closing

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#InfluentialOrigins #AndreaBolender #MarchOfTheLiving #JewishMemory #HMTC

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