Meet L’Dor V’Dor Circle Donor Toni Greenberg

A UM alumni parent, Toni Greenberg chose to make her legacy gift by establishing the Ruth Goldschmidt Memorial Fund for Holocaust Remembrance at Michigan Hillel.

“After my mother passed away, my children and I discussed how to honor her memory,” Toni says. “My mother fled Germany in 1938, at age 16, via the Kindertransport. She spent nine years on the run among France, Switzerland, and Belgium, under horrific circumstances, and finally emigrated to the United States, having lost her entire family. She built a good life here and her greatest joy was her grandchildren.

We discussed doing something Holocaust education-related because she had spoken countless times to synagogue and community groups, and because as survivors aged, my mother feared that people would forget the lessons of the Holocaust.”

A few months after her mother passed, Toni’s daughter Miriam (UM ’21) remarked, “You know, every time I visited Grandma, even when she could barely communicate anymore, she would always ask me if I’d been to Hillel events, and what was going on with Hillel. I wonder why that was so important to her?”

Upon reflection, Toni concluded, “I think it was because she lost those high school and young adult years, and never had a chance to be part of a youth group or go to college. She was especially delighted that Miriam went to Shabbat dinners and other events and made friends at Hillel.”

With that realization in mind, “We endowed the Ruth Goldschmidt Memorial Fund for Holocaust Remembrance at Michigan Hillel to ensure that young adults bear witness to the Holocaust, and because Hillel was so important to my mother and is so important to us.”

Want to learn more about joining the L’Dor V’Dor Circle with a legacy gift to a Jewish organization in greater Ann Arbor? Contact legacy@jewishannarbor.org or call 734-773-3538.