The Olga Lengyel Institute
for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights
The Olga Lengyel Institute is a recognized leader of Holocaust and human rights professional development education for teachers throughout the US and Europe. Inspired by the legacy of Olga Lengyel, author of Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz, TOLI provides educators with the knowledge, skills and confidence to make the Holocaust relevant for today’s students.
TOLI offers in-person, experiential four or five-day seminars primarily for middle and high school teachers. Seminars are small (approx. 20-30) to foster peer collaboration and a safe learning environment. In the US they are teacher-led by educators who have completed our Leadership Institute. We do not create curricula; rather, we help teachers navigate the wide variety of available resources to create lessons plans that address their students’ needs.
TOLI’s unique pedagogy uses reflective writing and inquiry-based learning to engage the hearts and minds of teachers. We often link the study of the Holocaust to local civil/human rights issues, so educators can guide their students to understand how stereotypes and prejudice can take hold in a democratic society.
Most participants in TOLI seminars are not Jewish, so sessions on Jewish religion, history, life and culture before and after the Holocaust are an important part of our programs. Teachers meet with rabbis in synagogues and often are hosted for Shabbat dinners. Presentations on historical and contemporary antisemitism, including Holocaust distortion and denial are delivered by scholars and other experts.
Alumni become part of the global “TOLI network” and are provided year-round mentoring and virtual programs, as well as impact grants to support their classroom work.
As of 2024, TOLI has impacted over 5,000 educators in 15 countries.
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What We Do
The Olga Lengyel Institute was established to educate teachers in the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world about human rights and social justice through the lens of the Holocaust and other genocides so that such atrocities may never again take place.
Olga Lengyel
Olga Lengyel was a survivor of Auschwitz and author of Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz. Published in 1947, it was one of the first accounts of the horrors of the Nazi extermination plan. An American immigrant and philanthropist, Olga dedicated herself to remembering the martyrs and lessons of the Holocaust so that such atrocities would never happen again. Those education programs were initially organized under the auspices of the Memorial Library and Art Collection of the Second World War. TOLI was established to honor Olga’s work and memory and was incorporated in 2014 as a 501c3 non-profit organization.
Olga was born in 1908 in Cluj, the capital of Transylvania (now in Romania) to a Jewish family. She studied medicine in Cluj, where she met her husband, Dr Miklós Lengyel and they had two children. Together they opened a medical sanatorium. In May 1944, Olga and her parents, husband, and two sons were forced into a cattle car and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi death camp. Olga was the only member of her family to survive.
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