On March 9, 2026, the Good Will Foundation’s administration visited The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights (hereinafter referred to as TOLI) in New York, United States of America. The activities carried out by TOLI are partially financed by the Good Will Foundation, and by the decision of the Good Will Foundation Board, funding will also be allocated for the project “Learning from the Past, Acting for the Future – Teaching about the Holocaust and Human Rights in Lithuania” planned for 2026.
It is important for the Good Will Foundation to see and understand how the institutions of the US project applicants operate, what is the history of their establishment, what activities are given the greatest attention and what is the basis for this, and what are their current issues and challenges today.
TOLI was founded thanks to Olga Lengyel, a Holocaust survivor, writer, and public figure who was born in 1908 in the territory of present-day Romania to a Jewish family. She studied medicine and worked with her husband, a doctor. In 1944, she was deported with her family to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and was the only survivor of her entire family. After World War II, she emigrated to the United States and wrote a memoir about the horrors of the Auschwitz camp, and dedicated her entire life to Holocaust remembrance and education so that such tragedies would never happen again.
An extraordinary feeling comes over you when you stand in the premises of the institute she founded, in the apartment where she lived and worked. It was incredibly moving to meet the team that nurtures and continues Ms. Olga’s work after her death in 2001. TOLI is making every effort to organize seminars for teachers all over the world on how to teach the history of the Holocaust in schools, how to correctly understand what genocide is and who needs to talk about human rights, and what dangers await us if we allow discrimination, anti-Semitism and racism to spread in our societies.
The book “Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz” received as a gift will allow us to hear another invaluable testimony about the horror of the Auschwitz camp from the first lips.
The International Seminar, which will be held in Vilnius on April 24-26, 2026, with the participation of the Lithuanian Jewish (Litvak) Community, which is the main partner in implementing TOLI projects in Lithuania, and its chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, will provide an opportunity to continue the international conversation that began many years ago about the need for teaching about the Holocaust and new learning methods for young generations, which are constantly moving away from this extremely important topic for Lithuania and the World.
Photo (left to right):
Victoria Fabisch, TOLI Director of Development
Vilma Zlatkauskaitė, GWF Project manager
Marija Navickaitė, GWF Assistant to director
Indrė Rutkauskaitė, GWF Director
Deborah Lauter, TOLI Executive Director
Carole Berez, TOLI Vice President
Mark Berez, TOLI President and Chairman
Ildiko Kope, TOLI Office Manager & Administrative Assistant
Oana Nestian-Sandu, TOLI International Programs Director (joined online)
