Karen Perna, a descendant of Holocaust survivors, is fortunate enough to have known her great-grandparents and grandparents, who fled Germany with her mother and aunt to escape the darkest days of human history, arriving in the US in March 1940. As fate would have it, Karen’s good fortune of growing up knowing of her family’s Holocaust experiences helped her realize how this atrocity was denied, ignored, downplayed, and not even taught in schools. Karen has had a lifelong desire to share her family’s history to enrich others not only about the Holocaust, but also about genocides still happening in our world today. Knowledge is power and it is Karen's legacy to share her history and knowledge with others. With her young family, Karen moved to Arizona in 1981, where she found the lack of familiarity of Judaism in Arizona surprising. Her first battle in Arizona was to get the Jewish holidays on the Mesa School District academic calendar because required testing was often done over major Jewish holidays, meaning Jewish school children would miss these crucial exams, and she has not stopped her advocacy since. Thankfully, Karen found the Phoenix Holocaust Association (PHA) and realized the organization aligns with her beliefs. She feels honored to serve on the PHA Board, as Coordinator of the PHA Speakers Bureau (arranging Holocaust speakers for schools and other organizations), and as a 2G (second generation of a Holocaust survivor) speaker.