Merle R. Saferstein

As the director of educational outreach at the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center for 26 years, Merle Saferstein worked closely with hundreds of Holocaust Survivors helping them to pass along their Legacy of Remembrance to hundreds of thousands of students and teachers. She developed and now teaches a course entitled Living and Leaving Your Legacy® and lectures on the subject of legacy to a variety of audiences locally, nationally and internationally.

She trains hospice staffs and volunteers showing them ways to help patients leave their legacies and works closely with the patients at the end of their lives doing sacred legacy work. She volunteers at a camp for children who experienced the death of a family member — helping them to gain important tools to cope with their grief, facilitates an all-day parent session at these camps and also facilitates a writing class at Gilda’s Club for women who have been impacted by cancer. Through Mishkan Miami, she is currently spearheading a committee to create a weekend bereavement retreat for Jewish families in South Florida.

Merle, an extensive journal writer, has completed over 360 volumes of journals. For 14 years, she culled through them taking excerpts according to approximately 70 seventy topics. From this, she plans to write a book. Merle is the author of Room 732, a B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree, is a council member of the International Association of Journal Writers and is a contributor to the Huffington Post and Thrive Global. Merle was recently chosen as the 2019 Greater Miami Jewish Federation Volunteer of the Year.