Hey, everyone! Yom HaShoah is coming up soon, and to remember the Holocaust, I’ve decided to blog about David Broide, a truly exceptional teen who collected pennies to represent the 1.5 million children murdered in the Holocaust. “My grandfather was a partisan in the forests of Bransk, Poland, and he saved many lives and was my hero,” David shares. “When he passed away the year before my bar mitzvah, it made me realize that the survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust were dying and that now it was my turn to tell his story and to teach my generation to never forget and never allow another Holocaust to happen.”

David’s original goal was to gather 1.5 million pennies and find a donor who could donate the cash equivalent ($15,000) to help the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center (http://www.hdec.org/) build the first bilingual museum in the country and then donate the 1.5 million pennies so that everyone could see what 1.5 million of something looks like. “None of us can imagine how big this really was,” David says.

“To get started with my project, my parents included an insert in my bar mitzvah invitation letting all my friends and family know about my project. When I celebrated my bar mitzvah with family and friends in August, I got a lot of pennies and they were displayed.”

A lot of pennies is an understatement! By April 10, 2010 (Yom Hashoah, which was when David’s project was supposed to end), David had exceeded his goal and collected 1.7 million pennies––and not only did he still want to collect more, but his project had expanded to raising pennies to honor every one of the 6 million who died, not just the children. “I decided that I needed to stand up like my grandfather and now more than ever continue in my efforts to show the world what SIX MILLION looks like. I will not stop until I count and honor every Jewish soul lost.”

To this day, David has a little over 2 million pennies, some of which were donated by “a rabbi who gave me rolled pennies that belonged to his father. The grandma of one of my best friends gave me a huge jar with the coins that her husband, who passed away, had been collecting for years. Another gentleman who owns a dry cleaner called me and told me that he had heard about my project and had been collecting pennies in his store. Stories like these have really touched my heart.”

Although David’s experience in collecting pennies wasn’t entirely positive (horrible comments were made about David and his project on an antisemitic Web site, and someone even went as far as to send him a hate e-mail), he doesn’t regret a thing. “Hate is hate and it exists,” is David’s response to the antisemitism directed at him. “We must stop the antisemitism, the hate, and the genocides happening around the world!” With each penny collected, David is one step closer to teaching his generation this message.

For more information about David’s project or to learn how to donate pennies, visit his website at http://www.neverforgetneveragain.org/.