In 1953, eight years after the end of World War II, people were not talking about the Holocaust. At the time, the average person either didn’t know about it or thought the topic taboo. This was the case until ‘50s reality documentary show “This is Your Life” featured Hanna Kohner, a survivor of four concentration camps.

Now passed on, Kohner’s daughter Julie Kohner, founder of the nonprofit organization “Voices of the Generation,” visited Manhattan High last week to share her mother’s story via the episode Hanna starred in.

“[Presenting around the world is] fabulous,” Julie said. “I’ve been doing it for 26 years. My favorite [part] is to talk to students and share the message of my mother’s. As she said, there will come a point where there’s no survivors, and it’s up to us as children of survivors to make sure people never forget the story of my parents and survivors in general, because it’s vital that the Holocaust be kept alive in their memory.”

In the episode, “This is Your Life” host Ralph Edwards helped share Hanna’s stories of survival in concentration camps including Auschwitz, her liberation, and how an old love, Walter Kohner, eventually found her in a Red Cross shelter.

Along the way, Edwards reunited Hanna with the friend she made while surviving, the American soldier who helped her contact the man she would soon marry, and her only known living relative, the brother she hadn’t seen in a decade.

“I didn’t feel that it was a legacy until my mother and father were, certainly my mother, was no longer alive and that I made it be my legacy,” Julie said. “I think [the show] opened people’s eyes. I think it made [the Holocaust] be acceptable to the public.”

After the video, Julie opened the room up to questions, where students found out she was wearing the charm bracelet Edwards had given her mother during the show, as well as insight into Julie’s life growing up as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor.

“I was really impressed and pleased with our students,” English department chair Mary Kris Roberson said. “I didn’t totally control who could see it, and I asked people to sign up and so hoping to get people who were seriously interested, and I was pleased with the behavior and the response and the questions that were asked. I thought there were some insightful questions asked by our students.”

Roberson found students’ positive reactions to Julie’s family story encouraging.

“It gave me more confidence in our student body just by how well they recieved her,” she said. “[It] made me know that I can do more things like that, and it would be beneficial.”

For students wanting to learn more about Hanna’s story, Julie left copies of her parents’ memoir, “Hanna and Walter: A Love Story,” for Roberson to sell for $15.