Stefanie Seltzer

Stefanie Seltzer is the Founder and President of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Descendants. The organization has hosted 32 annual conferences. Stefanie Seltzer was born in Lodz, Poland, where her father’s family, the Fiszman family, owned a large glass factory and store called Rozalia. Its history is documented in the recently completed museum in Radomsko where several pieces of its glassware are exhibited.Stefanie and her family lived in Radomsko, where in 1942, 10,000 Jews were deported to Treblinka, including most of the Fiszman family after her father was killed. Stefanie was smuggled out of the Radomsko ghetto as a very young child and hidden in several places. She was reunited with her mother during the Warsaw uprising. The two hid together in several spots after being liberated by the Russians. They made their way back to their hometown of Lodz where they remained until 1946. At that point they took a train to Vienna, to a Displaced Persons Camp and immigrated to the United States in 1952.Following a Philadelphia meeting of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, in 1985 she convened a group of Child Survivors from the northeast corridor and organized the first two international conferences of Child Survivors. This led to the formation of the World Federation of Jewish Survivors and their Descendants, which has 64 groups throughout the world. Stefanie is also vice-president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and serves on the Leadership Committee of the Claims Conference. She is also a founder member of Champions of Caring, a regional project for educating, and empowering young people to take active roles in improving their communities, through the lessons of the Holocaust. Since the mid-1970s,Stefanie has spoken about her eyewitness experiences during the Holocaust to educational and communal institutions, both locally and throughout the United States.Stefanie holds a B.A. in Psychology and a master’s degree in Counseling.