“Growing up German Catholic, I can honestly say I had heard of the Holocaust, but never really learned about the Holocaust. I attended private Catholic schools and lived in a predominantly German community in South St. Louis, MO. I recall bits and pieces of prejudicial conversations around the family lunch table that were deeply troubling to me, even as a young child. It wasn’t until my mid-thirties that I fully understood the meaning of the Holocaust, when I visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., with my husband and children. For me, this experience was truly life–changing.”

– Dee Dee Simon

“I am Jewish and my mother often read and spoke about the Holocaust in our home. My father was a cantor, a clergy member who filled diverse roles within the Jewish community. As a young child, I attended Epstein Hebrew Academy before transferring to the Ladue School District. I understood that if my grandmother had not fled Ukraine when she did, I would likely not be alive today. In another time and place, Dee Dee and I, as a German Catholic and a Jew, would not be married.”

– Eliot Simon

We are the Simons, the founders of Conversation Builds Character. Our desire to create a better society for all is driven by our personal life experiences and our deep concern as citizens of this world in which we live. We are not acting on behalf of any one organization, nor do we have a political agenda. We simply understand that hate is still prevalent in our world and genocide is still happening. We know we must keep learning from the past and speaking about it in the present, in order to protect freedom for all in the future. If we appreciate the freedom and the democracy we have today, how can we not embrace the opportunity to make the world a better place not only now, for this generation, but also for future generations?

We hope you will join us in the conversation.

For more information and to join the conversation, please email
info@conversationbuildscharacter.org