Lennard Hammerschlag

Lennard Hammerschlag founded the Wally and Lutz Hammerschlag Educator Fellowship to honor the memory of his parents. Wally (Moritz) Hammerschlag, of Frankfurt au Main, Germany, was an eyewitness to the violent anti-Jewish pogrom of November 9-10, 1938 known as Kristallnacht. His father Ludwig “Lutz” Adolf Hammerschlag’s family lived in Germany for generations and could trace ancestry going back centuries.

The Wally and Lutz Hammerschlag Educator Fellowship is a fund awarded in perpetuity to benefit educators of the Holocaust who share in ensuring that the mission of Holocaust education and remembrance continues. It provides financial awards for educators attending/participating in professional development opportunities available through the Sara & Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center. Each educator in the program studies stories of Holocaust survivors, including that of Wally and Lutz Hammerschlag, with the themes “their life stories are resilience, and no one can take away your education from you.”

This fellowship has made such opportunities possible as the bi-annual Summer Educator Seminar at Stockton, Yad Vashem teacher seminars in Jerusalem, study tours to European sites related to the Holocaust, domestic study tours to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington DC), the Museum of Jewish Heritage (New York City) and the National Museum of American Jewish History (Philadelphia). Hammerschlag believes there are many other opportunities to promote Holocaust education that are available to future educators.