2025 New York Next Generation Event

An author, she has written several books, including Diane: A Signature Life, The Woman I Wanted to Be, which has been translated into eight languages, and Own It: The Secret to Life. The recipient of countless prestigious awards, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2019, and she received the Chevalier de la Légion D’Honneur from France in 2020, the Commandeur de l'Ordre de la Couronne from her native Belgium in 2021, and the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award in 2022. Diane currently serves on the boards of Vital Voices and the CFDA, and in 2023, she was the subject of Woman Before Fashion, a book published by Rizzoli, which followed the exhibition dedicated to her life and career at Brussels's Fashion & Lace Museum. In 2024, she was the subject of the documentary Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge, which premiered as the opening selection at TriBeCa festival before officially launching on Hulu and Disney+ internationally. At the 2025 New York Next Generation Event, Diane will speak about the impact her mother’s experiences as a Holocaust survivor had on her own life and work. Photo: Diane von Furstenberg. Mireille Roobaert

In March 1938, just a few weeks before Ernie was born, Nazi Germany annexed the neighboring country of Austria in what was known as the Anschluss. Once in control, the Nazis quickly applied German anti-Jewish legislation to Vienna and the rest of Germany’s newly acquired territory. The intent was to exclude Jews from economic, cultural, and social life. Many Jewish-owned factories and thousands of businesses were closed or confiscated by the government, including Josef Koppelmann’s company, Lux Films. The Nazi government accused the company of evading taxes and arrested Ernie’s father, grandfather, and great-uncles before taking over the business.

Israel was in prison around the time of Ernie’s birth, but he was able to write to Pepi and other family members and inquire about his family’s well-being. While Ernie's grandfather and great-uncles were eventually released, Israel died in prison before he had the opportunity to meet his younger son. Pepi learned of his death in July 1938. A letter from the time indicates that Israel may have taken his own life, which was common in the desperate and despairing Viennese Jewish community at the time.

Life became quite difficult for Jews in German-annexed Austria and many attempted to leave, including Pepi. She joined the massive lines that formed at consulates, municipal, police, and passport offices across Vienna to try to get the necessary paperwork required to emigrate. The bureaucratic hurdles were overwhelming, and the process was lengthy. It sometimes took years to successfully obtain an immigration visa. Even if they received a visa, Jews had to sign away virtually all of their property and assets.

As conditions for Jews continued to worsen, they were barred from all public schools and universities, as well as from cinemas, theaters, and sports facilities. All Jews were required to carry identity cards that indicated their Jewish heritage. Then, in the summer of 1938, all Jewish passports were made invalid until they were stamped with the letter "J" to explicitly identify the holder as Jewish.

Fearing for their safety following the explosion of antisemitism, Pepi secured passage on the Kindertransport for her older son, Manfred, then aged four. The Kindertransport, approved by the British government in response to Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”) on November 9, allowed unaccompanied minors from the German Reich (including recently annexed territories) to enter Great Britain as refugees. Manfred left for England via the Netherlands in August 1939 and stayed with a Dutch Jewish couple. While initially there was some information exchanged between Manfred’s foster parents and his family in Austria, the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, cut off communication.

Authorities began testing the idea of deportations to Lublin, Poland of the Viennese Jewish population in the autumn of 1939, although official Nazi policy remained forced emigration. Sometime in the next year, Ernie and his mother were required to report to a school for Jewish children that had been converted into a holding facility. They feared the worst. Pepi had already begun the process of trying to emigrate out of German territory and likely argued that she and Ernie should be released so they could leave the country voluntarily. But it wasn’t until Ernie became inconsolable with coughing and crying fits that a guard let them go. He instructed Pepi to take Ernie to a doctor. Instead, Pepi went straight to the American Consulate to inquire about their immigration prospects.

After gathering all of the necessary paperwork, including an affidavit of support, the American consulate granted Pepi and Ernie permission to immigrate to the United States. The two of them left Vienna in February 1941 and made their way to Portugal via France and Spain, where they boarded the Serpa Pinto, a Portuguese ship. They arrived in New York in March, just a few weeks before Ernie’s third birthday, which they were able to celebrate with family who had moved there years earlier. Pepi married her widowed brother-in-law, the individual who signed the affidavit of support required for their immigration to the United States. They settled in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

Although Ernie and Pepi had managed to escape Nazi Europe, they worried about family members from whom they were separated. Pepi wrote frequently to her sister living in Hungary, and to her father, who had immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine. Ernie remembers the excitement in the home when Pepi received a reply. She and her other family members in the United States attempted to secure immigration visas for them so that the family could be together, but the process proved very difficult.

Since the United States and Great Britain were allies, Pepi was again able to write to her son Manfred and his foster parents in England. Although Pepi urgently wanted Manfred with her, the ongoing war and the fact that her new husband did not want to take in another child prevented Manfred from joining his family in the United States. When Ernie learned to write, he began exchanging letters and comic books with Manfred. In 1947, Pepi traveled to England to celebrate Manfred’s bar mitzvah. She hoped to bring Manfred back with her, but she made the agonizing decision to leave without him, assuming he would have more opportunities if he stayed with his foster parents in England. It was not until 1960, when he was 21, that Ernie reunited with his brother.

Ernie received his undergraduate and law degrees from Columbia University. He worked in corporate investigations before launching his own corporate intelligence firm. He married twice and has three children, three stepchildren, and many grandchildren. He is now a volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Her essays connecting Holocaust history with social, cultural, and political issues today have appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Forward. Photo: Dr. Edna Friedberg. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Other Broadway credits include Harmony as Ruth, Fiddler on the Roof, and Les Misérables. She has starred in numerous off-Broadway and regional productions, including Jane Eyre, Once (Wilde Award), The Fantasticks (BroadwayWorld nomination), Our Town, Rags (San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle, Theatre Bay Area Awards Nominations), and more. She will make her screen acting debut in the upcoming feature film Caravan. Julie has released three albums with her pianist-composer spouse, Jason Yeager, and enjoys a vibrant concert career, having headlined sold-out solo shows at venues around the country, such as the San Francisco’s Venetian Room and New York’s Café Carlyle, as well as performing as a guest artist with numerous symphonies. Photo: Julie Benko. Kurt Csolak

Rabbi Buchdahl was invested as a cantor in 1999 and ordained as a rabbi in 2001 by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York where she was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. She earned a bachelor of arts in religious studies from Yale University in 1994. Born in Korea to a Jewish American father and a Korean Buddhist mother, Rabbi Buchdahl is the first Asian American to be ordained as a cantor or rabbi in North America. Prior to her service at Central Synagogue, Rabbi Buchdahl served as associate rabbi/cantor at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York. 

Rabbi Buchdahl has been nationally recognized for her innovations in leading worship, which draw large crowds both in the congregation’s historic Main Sanctuary and via livestream and cable broadcast to viewers in more than 100 countries. Rabbi Buchdahl was invited by President Barack Obama in 2014 and President Joe Biden in 2023 to share blessings and light the menorah for the White House Hanukkah party, the first rabbi invited by two administrations.

Rabbi Buchdahl has been featured in dozens of news outlets, including the Today Show, NPR, and PBS, and was listed as one of Newsweek’s “50 Most Influential Rabbis in America.” She serves on the boards of the Avodah Jewish Service Corps, AJC, the New York Board of Rabbis, UJA-Federation of New York, Yale University President’s Council, and the Israel Center at Seoul National University. Her memoir, Heart of a Stranger, will be published by Penguin Random House Press in October 2025.

Rabbi Buchdahl and her husband, Jacob Buchdahl, have three children. Photo: Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl.

Jason has performed across six continents, including at Carnegie Hall, Birdland, the Blue Note, and the Panama Jazz Festival. In addition to his work as a bandleader, Yeager has recorded on over 30 additional albums and performed with Sean Jones, George Garzone, and Luciana Souza, among others. An honors graduate of the Tufts/New England Conservatory Double Degree Program and the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, Jason is currently an associate professor of piano at Berklee College of Music and an adjunct instructor at MIT. Photo: Jason Yeager. Sasha Israel