Issue 8: Spring 2018 Authors

Barbara Bedney, PhD, MSW

Article: https://kavod.claimscon.org/2020/01/principles-and-practices-for-implementing-person-centered-trauma-informed-care-for-holocaust-survivors-and-other-older-adults/

Barbara Bedney, PhD, MSW, is Director of Program Planning and Evaluation at The Jewish Federations of North America. She helps the Center for Advancing Holocaust Survivor Care grantees with goal‐setting, evaluation, and measuring impact and disseminates service models and best practices throughout the Federation Movement. Her areas of expertise include aging, family caregiving, and program planning and evaluation, and she has created numerous
resource materials, and trainings. Previously, Barbara worked at the University of Illinois‐Chicago on an HIV prevention project for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; examined national long‐term care needs and trends at the University of California, San Francisco; and practiced Social Work in New York City. She received her Ph.D in Sociology from
the University of California, San Francisco, her MSW from New York University, and her Bachelor’s in Psychology and Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Betyna Bock

Poetry Collections: Spring 2020; Spring 2019; Spring 2018

Betyna Bock was born in Prague in 1946 after War War II. She emigrated to Sydney in 1948 with her parents, who were Holocaust survivors. Betyna began to write poetry and prose when she was 12 years old. She attended the Conservatorium High School of Music and then the University of Sydney, where she studied psychology and music. Later on, she also took up singing.

After graduating from university, Betyna went on to practice as a psychologist/psychotherapist. She now works in private practice under her married name Bettina Ebert. Over the past fifteen years Betyna has sung Yiddish and Hebrew with her daughter Nogah. Her son Benjamin has followed in his mother’s footsteps to become a psychologist. Betyna’s current poetry is about her experiences as the only daughter of her Holocaust survivor parents.

Michael Eisinger

Michael Eisinger is the Assistant Project Manager at the Center for Advancing Holocaust Survivor Care. While completing his Master’s in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Westchester University, he participated in several international academic and research programs
and was invited to speak at conferences, seminars, and symposiums on the subject of the Holocaust and genocide. After graduating, Michael deepened his knowledge of Holocaust survivor care as an AmeriCorps VISTA at Jewish Family Service of Metro Detroit. There, he helped enhance services and outreach to local Holocaust survivors and developed and implemented a staff training program on survivor history. In his spare time, Michael is pursuing a PhD in Philology, focusing on Holocaust survivor testimony, at Justus‐Liebig‐Universität
Gießen in Giessen, Germany.

Irit Felsen, Ph.D.

Articles: Holocaust Survivors as Participant Educators: Giving Space to Lived Experience of Social Trauma in Collective Memory ;  Encounters with Chronic Psychiatric Holocaust Survivors: Trauma, Psychosis and Functionality

Irit Felsen, PhD is a clinical psychologist specializing in trauma and traumatic loss, with a special focus on Holocaust survivors and their families. Dr. Felsen received her Ph.D from the University of Hamburg, Germany and completed her post-doctoral training at Yale University. She is an Adjunct Professor at Yeshiva University in NY, and is in private practice in Mountain Lakes, NJ, and in Englewood, NJ. She also serves on a national emergency response team for the delivery of services following critical incidents. Dr. Felsen is a researcher with the Yale University Trauma Study Group, and her research on the effects of trauma and intergenerational transmission of trauma was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, the Journal of Psychotherapy Research, the Journal of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, the journal of Psychoanalytic Psychology, and in book chapters in the “International Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma” and the recently published book “Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Testimonies: Unwanted Memories”. Dr. Felsen served as the Clinical Coordinator of services for Holocaust survivors at the Jewish Family Services of Metrowest in NJ and as a NJ State Emergency Psychiatric Services Screener. She is the daughter of Holocaust survivor parents.

Emily Kaplan

Emily Kaplan is the Project Coordinator for Holocaust Survivor Services at Jewish Family and Career Services in Atlanta, Georgia. She has served in this capacity for nearly two years and highly values the opportunity to provide Holocaust survivors with various services and outlets in order to enhance their lives and empower them to continue making choices at their current stage of life. Prior to working with Holocaust survivors, Emily taught and evaluated children with special needs. Emily holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina.

Tatiana Kastner

Tatiana Kastner is a Gerontological Social Worker at Edmonton Jewish Family Services. She graduated with a Master’s degree in Social Work from McGill University in Montreal. She has many years of experience working with immigrants and helping them to fulfil their potential. Tatiana speaks English, French, Russian, and Hebrew, which enables her to connect to her clients in their mother tongue. In the last five years, she has worked with Holocaust survivors as an intake worker and a case manager. In addition to practical Social Work, she is integrating counselling into her practice, and applying the T.E.A.M. therapy method. Tatiana is also enthusiastic about use of digital technologies in homecare and other helping professions.

Deb Kram

Deb Kram is the Client Outreach Manager for the Claims Conference. Kram came to her work at the Claims Conference following a prominent career in adult education in Boston, where she launched Ma’ayan, an award-winning program for the study of Jewish texts, as its founding Program Director, and had served as the Director of Adult Learning for the Combined Jewish Philanthropies. An alumna of the Mandel Jerusalem Fellows, Kram has lectured across North America and Israel, and has taught as visiting faculty at Brandeis University’s Center for Studies in Jewish Education.