Through piecing together stories heard from relatives, the current generation is keeping the memory alive as Holocaust Remembrance Day is commemorated this Sunday.
Brandon Huinink, 23, grew up hearing about the Westerbork concentration camp in Holland.
His grandfather, Bernard Huinink, was sent there for hiding a Jew during the war until his neighbours told the Nazis.
Bernard was able to escape and while Brandon carries some of his grandfather’s stories, he says he wishes he knew more.
“There’s definitely things he left out,” said Brandon. “It’s just something he didn’t talk that much about, but everybody just knew parts of the story because it had come out here and there.”
Brandon joined 31 of Bernard’s descendents in Holland to see the camp in 2007. After Bernard died last year, he continued to stay in touch with the Jew saved by his grandfather.
Ben Kenner, 19, knows that his grandmother survived Auschwitz and his grandfather was part of the resistance in Russia. Neither talked much about their past.
“Of course I’ll tell my children,” Kenner said. “It’s part of what you need to know as a Jew. (Everybody) has to know what happened.”
