In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Glenside Local is highlighting Sophie Don, a 2010 Cheltenham High School graduate who was named Associate Director of the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation in 2023.

Don was previously the senior manager of programs for the Holocaust Memorial which oversees the Horwitz-Wasserman Memorial Plaza in Center City. Her grandparents, Samuel and Shirley Don, were Holocaust survivors who put up the money for the statue in the plaza.

Upon opening in 1964, the structure became the first Holocaust memorial in the United States.

Don received her MA from Brown University in the Public Humanities. The program built on her BA in History at Skidmore College in New York where she focused her thesis research on Holocaust education and memorialization across the United States and Berlin.

At Cheltenham High, Sophie was in the National Honor Society and was named “most likely to save the world” by her classmates, local historian Chuck Langerman said.

For more on her life and career, you can read the Jewish Exponent’s article here.

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Photo: LinkedIn