As the director of educational outreach at the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center for twenty-six 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. When she retired from the Holocaust Center, she developed a course entitled Living and Leaving Your Legacy® and teaches and speaks to 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. For many years, she has volunteered at a camp for children who experienced the death of a family member—helping them gain important tools to cope with their grief and also facilitates an all-day parent session at these camps.
For over nine years, Merle has facilitated a bi-weekly writing for wellness group at Gilda’s Club for women who have been impacted by cancer. She is also currently involved in Wisdom of the Century, a project that interviews individuals ninety years old and older. Merle has been facilitating a weekly journaling circle since April 2020 at the start of Covid.
For fourteen years, she culled through her journals taking excerpts according to approximately seventy topics. This June, Living and Leaving My Legacy, vol. 1, a book containing eleven of these topics was released. The second volume will be published in 2023. Merle is also the author of Room 732, a short story collection which pays homage to the historic Hollywood Beach Hotel, and a B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree.