Special Speaker Series: Rachel Cerrotti

In 2009, Rachael Cer­rot­ti, a col­lege stu­dent pur­su­ing a career in pho­to­jour­nal­ism, asked her grand­moth­er, Hana, if she could record her sto­ry. Rachael knew that her grand­moth­er was a Holo­caust sur­vivor and the only one in her fam­i­ly alive at the end of the war. Rachael also knew that she sur­vived because of the kind­ness of strangers. It wasn’t a secret. Hana spoke about her his­to­ry pub­licly and reg­u­lar­ly. But, Rachael want­ed to doc­u­ment it as only a grand­daugh­ter could. So, that’s what they did: Hana talked and Rachael wrote. Upon Hana’s pass­ing in 2010, Rachael dis­cov­ered an incred­i­ble archive of her life. We Share the Same Sky weaves togeth­er the sto­ries of these two young women — Hana as a refugee who remains one step ahead of the Nazis at every turn, and Rachael, whose insa­tiable curios­i­ty to touch the past guides her into the lives of count­less strangers, bring­ing her love and trag­ic loss. Through­out the course of her twen­ties, Hana’s his­to­ry becomes a guide­book for Rachael in how to live a life empow­ered by grief.

Rachael Cer­rot­ti is an award-win­ning pho­tog­ra­ph­er, writer, edu­ca­tor and audio pro­duc­er. In 2019, she released her crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed pod­cast (also titled We Share the Same Sky) about her grandmother’s war sto­ry; the show was list­ed as one of the best pod­casts of the year by Huff­in­g­ton Post. Rachael’s work has been fea­tured by out­lets around the world includ­ing NPR, PRI’s The World, WBUR, GBH, and in 2021 she became the Inau­gur­al Sto­ry­teller In Res­i­dence for USC Shoah Foun­da­tion.