Jackie Sherman

Tour curated by: Tyler Rodriguez, Intern, and Adina Langer, Curator, Museum of History and Holocaust Education | 15 Locations

Born in New York City in 1954, Jackie Sherman learned that her mother, Doris Regensburger, had to flee Nazi Germany as a young teenager. Along with her parents, Alfred and Johanna Regensburger, Doris and her sister, Marianne, emigrated to the United States in 1940 after a sojourn in England. Doris was sent in February 1939 on a Kindertransport after experiencing the horrors of Kristallnacht in her hometown of Fürth, near Nuremburg. Alfred, a bombardier in the German Army during World War I, helped to save other Jewish veterans from incarceration in concentration camps before escaping with his family.

Having owned a successful textile business in Germany, the Regensburgers struggled to start over in the United States, and their experiences as refugees of the Holocaust left a lasting impression on Jackie and her family. For Jackie, this manifested in part as a deep curiosity about different ways of living and being in the world. After graduating from high school in Englewood, New Jersey, Jackie studied economics at Tufts University and the University of Michigan, studying abroad in England and later traveling to Burkina Faso to work in economic development. Ultimately, Jackie settled in Atlanta, Georgia, where she has balanced her time between a career in strategic planning and executive coaching and serving her community through service on various nonprofit boards. It is her hope that students learning about her family's story will gain a deeper understanding of how history affects real people and why it is important for all of us to work to prevent genocides like the Holocaust from happening anywhere in the world.

Watch Jackie Sherman's legacy series oral history video

Locations for Tour

"I don’t know if my grandfather’s whole family came at the same time, but I believe he came in 1909 and he was the second of I think there were nine children, several of them died in fires and maybe there was a stillbirth, but I believe there were five that came to the United States, five or… Learn more

“He was the owner of a textile mill that was in Hof, Germany, that had been owned by his cousin David Regensburger and I don’t know how it is that he inherited it. I know that he worked there, that he had done an internship and come to the United States in the early 1900s, and that he ran the… Learn more

“He originally signed up to be in the cavalry, and as I understand it, the cavalry was not exciting enough for him, and so he then switched to the air force and became a bombardier. He definitely won medals, and I know he was really proud of his military service, and I believe in the effort to leave… Learn more

“So, I visited with my mother in 2002, and they lived actually really close to the town square, around the corner from a department store actually that, we went there to buy an umbrella because it was raining when we were visiting. It was near the train station. It was off a main street. And it was… Learn more

“So apparently my aunt was aked to play the Christmas angel in her school Christmas play, and as I understand it my grandmother went to talk with the rabbi to make sure this was okay, and he said yes. And then there must've been some sort of write-up in the newspaper and a picture of her-- she was… Learn more

“Apparently, my grandmother spoke to my grandfather about it and really wanted to leave and, because he didn’t really believe this was happening in his Germany, he refused to leave. And then as I understand it, they were visiting in the summer of ’38 in Berlin, and you know things were clearly… Learn more

“My grandparents’ home was not harmed in anyway the way homes and stores were harmed in Nuremburg.“The Nazis came and knocked on the door, told them to get dressed, they were going into the town square. Apparently, my mom was not dressed in anything particularly warm and one of the officers said… Learn more

“My grandfather found a Polish Jew who, for a hefty sum, was helping transport peoples’ home effects; furniture, linens, silverware, whatever, out of the country and he was able to – he told my grandfather to pack up some trunks and be prepared – prepare to have them sent out. My mom says she – my… Learn more

“So, she was received, and she was put in boarding school, I believe the family lived in Kent or Sussex. So she was put in boarding school there, and then when it was no longer safe, and they were getting people out of, kind of what I call 'the greater London area,' the boarding school moved to… Learn more

"When they were in England – my grandfather couldn’t work. I know he was really disturbed that he wasn’t able to work so I think they just lived in the country house of their relatives until they were able to get passage to the United States. "He was interned in the Isle of Man. And, when they… Learn more

“My mom was still in high school, and she was enrolled in George Washington High School. They lived in Washington Heights, eventually they got an apartment on 181st street, it was a one-bedroom apartment. Apparently, my mother and my aunt slept in the bedroom and my grandparents slept on a couch in… Learn more

“I think she had a lot of gratitude for what she had. Her commitment to voting and her membership and activeness in the League of Women Voters, you know I can remember her taking me to the voting booth as a small child and she never missed an election. She felt like this was something that was taken… Learn more

"She worked for a newspaper in Munich; she worked for other newspapers. Eventually she moved to Berlin until she died in 2002. And she worked in kind of a variety of aspects in what you call the media. She wrote for newspapers. She wrote both, I think, news and opinion pieces. She was very active in… Learn more

“Englewood is a town that I used to describe as 50% Black, 50% white, and half of the whites were Jewish. That's how you can describe my high school. I had friends who were African American, half the school was African American, so I feel like I grew up in a time where I knew people who came from… Learn more

“The year I turned 40, I realized that I was physically cold all the time. So I grew up in New York, I went to college in Boston, I went to graduate school in Michigan, a little bit of time in Africa – warm weather. I discovered I could live in warm weather and actually I quite liked being warm. "So… Learn more