The Journey of Janet Singer Applefield

About the Speaker

Janet Singer Applefield is a child survivor of the Holocaust, author, notable speaker, and change agent. She earned a Master of Social Work at Boston University and practiced as a clinical social worker in the Greater Boston area for 20+ years.

When Janet first arrived in the U.S. in 1947, her father asked her to write everything she could remember since they were separated in August 1942. During his life, they never spoke about their collective torture. There is a lot of guilt in survivors whose stories didn’t include concentration camps, so Janet considered herself someone not worthy of discussing. Her notes from her arrival were rediscovered by family in 1984 and became a blueprint for self-discovery. Her written account, originally in Polish, is now recognized as “righteous among nations” at Yad Vashem in Israel and Janet is able to share her trauma and the traumas experienced by her family through her memoir Becoming Janet: Finding Myself in the Holocaust (Cypress Press, 2024), interviews, and speaking engagements.

Janet speaks openly about her experiences as a child survivor of the Holocaust with thousands of people each year through regular speaking engagements with libraries, schools, houses of worship, corporations, and government agencies. Her talks raise awareness and understanding of the dangers of prejudice and encourage audiences to stand up to any kind of discrimination and injustice. In 2021, she was invited to tell her story before the Massachusetts State Legislature, on the occasion of the passage Bill H.692, an act mandating statewide genocide education in all secondary schools.

This event is sponsored by the Martin Institute for Law & Society.