2021 Ohio Virtual Event

Rina Frankel Holocaust Survivor and Event Chair

Rina Barth Frankel was born in the small town of Zarszyn, Poland. She was five years old when the Nazis invaded the country in 1939. Rina was the youngest of three sisters and her parents, Hersh and Miriam, owned a grocery store. Her grandfather Leibowitcz was the town’s rabbi, and her grandfather Barth owned a little jewelry and watch repair store.

After the invasion by the Nazis, all of them escaped to Ukraine, where within a few months the Russians marched in. The entire family, among other Polish refugees, were shipped to Siberia. Toward the end of 1941, most Polish refugees were allowed to leave Siberia, so the Barth family got permission to go to Buchara, Uzbekistan, with the hope of reaching Palestine. Within weeks, Rina’s father died and that dream was cut short. In 1946, they were repatriated to Poland, where they were again caught by Communists.

Separated from other members of the family who managed to survive, they were able to leave Poland in November 1948 for France, and finally, in 1949, they arrived in the newly created State of Israel. Rina later immigrated to the United States and now lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

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Jeffrey Goldberg Editor in Chief, The Atlantic

Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor in chief of The Atlantic. He joined the publication in 2007 as a national correspondent and was named the 164-year-old magazine's 14th editor in chief in October 2016. During his editorship, The Atlantic has set new audience and subscription records, and its journalistic reach has become global. In 2020, he was named Editor of the Year by Adweek, which also named The Atlantic Magazine of the Year. Digiday recently stated that The Atlantic "is enjoying its most relevant cultural moment since the 19th century."

Before joining the magazine, Goldberg served as the Middle East correspondent and the Washington correspondent for the New Yorker, and was also a writer for the New York Times Magazine. He began his career as a police reporter for the Washington Post. Goldberg is the author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror.

A former fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, he also served as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and as the Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Goldberg is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Magazine Award for Reporting, the Daniel Pearl Prize for Reporting, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Prize for Best Investigative Reporting.

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Dr. Robert Williams Deputy Director, International Affairs, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Dr. Robert Williams is deputy director for international affairs at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He is on the steering committee of the Global Task Force on Holocaust Distortion and served for four years as chair of the Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial at the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. He regularly advises international organizations and governments on antisemitism and Holocaust issues, and he is currently overseeing a major initiative that assesses European Holocaust and genocide denial laws.

Williams’s research specialties include German history, United States and Russian foreign policy, propaganda and disinformation, and contemporary antisemitism. Outside of work, he is co-editing a volume for Routledge on the history of antisemitism and a separate monograph on the impact and forms of contemporary political antisemitism.

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Sara J. Bloomfield Director, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Sara J. Bloomfield has led the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for 21 years, working to build a global institution that raises Holocaust awareness, deepens understanding of the lessons of the Holocaust, confronts denial, and advances genocide prevention.

She serves on the International Auschwitz Council and is a recipient of the Officers Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland and five honorary doctorates. She joined the planning staff of the Museum in 1986 when it was a project in development and served in a variety of roles before becoming director in 1999.

Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Ms. Bloomfield holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from Northwestern University, a Master’s degree in Education from John Carroll University, and has studied business administration at the graduate level. 

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