Our Team

Anita Peleg
Chair of Trustees, PR and Marketing.

Anita is a University Lecturer and National Teaching Fellow specialising in Marketing, Research and Business Ethics.  She has also carried out significant research into the Nazi Holocaust and published two books about her mother, Naomi Blake, a sculptor and survivor of Auschwitz.  She is a Trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and is currently applying her 20 years of teaching experience to educate about the Holocaust, speaking at universities, schools, Jewish and Christian religious institutions.

Stephen Alder
Treasurer

Stephen Adler is a UK qualified chartered accountant and was a partner in the accountancy practice Shelley Stock Hutter for 25 years until his retirement in 2018. His career was spent looking after and mentoring owner- managed businesses.

Stephen has also served as Trustee and treasurer for several charities based in the local community.   As a Trustee of Generation 2 Generation, Stephen is committed to raising awareness and understanding of the Holocaust.

Louise Heilbron
Trustee

Louise has more than 15 years’ experience in primary school education and special needs coordination.  She has an MA in Jewish Education and an MA in Jewish History and Culture. She subsequently trained as a Holocaust Educator at Beth Shalom, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Education Trust and the Imperial War Museum and spent over 20 years delivering Holocaust education programmes.

As part of her Fellowship Programme at the Imperial War Museum she established education sessions at her synagogue for Holocaust Memorial Day. She now runs sessions on the Holocaust for a variety of community groups of all ages and backgrounds. In recognition of her services to Holocaust education, in 2016 she was awarded an Honorary Master’s Degree by Middlesex University.

Andrew Hirsch
Trustee

Andrew has worked in the communications industry for the last 27 years running the world’s leading creative content agency. During this time Andrew has lived in London, New York and Sydney and created the tone of voice for some of the world’s most trusted brands, such as John Lewis and Waitrose in the UK, Bloomingdales in the US and Pick n Pay in South Africa. Andrew has been a school governor at King Alfred School in London and was Chair of the Content Marketing Association (CMA) for a number of years.

Andrew is a second generation Holocaust survivor, whose father arrived from Germany in 1939 on the last Kindertransport.

Lesley Urbach
Co-chair and Outreach and Speaker Placement Lead

Lesley Urbach has an MRes in Jewish History and Culture from Southampton University. Since retiring from her work as a careers adviser, she has co-founded the Remembering Eleanor Rathbone Group, and is a Trustee and member of the planning and operations committee for Generation 2 Generation. Lesley also sits on the committee of the Second Generation Network and is involved in two projects supporting refugees.

Helen Stone
Co-chair and Speaker Training Lead

Helen Stone has forty years’ experience as a secondary school teacher of English and Special Needs. She was the Head of English in a Pupil Referral Unit in the London Borough of Brent. Since her retirement, she has been presenting her mother Emmy Golding’s story to schools and trainee teachers. Currently she teaches English as a Second Language to refugees and asylum seekers at Barnet Refugee Service.

Sharman Berwald
Presenter Recruitment Lead

Sharman Berwald was involved in the establishment of the Holocaust Learning UK programme 18 years ago. This provides a unique opportunity for young people to meet a Holocaust survivor and/or one of their descendants, to hear their testimony.  Sharman also volunteers at the Holocaust Survivors’ Centre in Hendon, sometimes escorting survivor
speakers to speaking engagements for Holocaust Education Trust.  Sharman is passionate about developing future educational presentations with 2G and 3G speakers. Her mother in law, Rita Rimalower, came on the Kindertransport from Leipzig, aged 15.

Bernice Krantz
Presenter Recruitment

Bernice Krantz became, in 1995, the Regional Co-ordinator in London for the Los Angeles based Shoah Visual History Foundation. Bernice was responsible for organising interviews with 870 survivors. Since 2001 she has been on the joint committee of Northwood Holocaust Memorial Day Events (which has since changed its name to Holocaust Learning UK) and is a workshop facilitator. The Northwood events this year reached 3,360 students in nine synagogues and incorporated 280 workshops.

Simon Waxman
Technical and Creative Development

Simon Waxman has been a self-employed videographer for twenty years and has taught media and all aspects of video production to people of all ages. He has worked on a wide variety of projects in various capacities. He is involved as an editor, camera person and in data/footage management in the Sephardi Voices UK Project and in the Refugee Voices Project for the AJR.

Katie Palmer
Third Generation 

Katie Palmer is a Civil Servant working in an organisation relevant to both World Wars. She has an undergraduate degree in History of Art specialising in World War II looted art in Europe. Katie has spent the last four years searching for information on her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. She is now working towards helping other Third Generation survivors research their family histories and tell their stories. Katie hopes to further her studies this year by completing a Master’s in Contemporary History.