Local teacher Righteous Among the Neighbors honoree
Award recognizes non-Jewish supporters who take action against antisemitism
Over the past 25 years, Dr. Meg Pankiewicz has been fiercely committed to making the world a better place.
The Canon-McMillan High School English teacher, who holds a doctorate in Holocaust studies, teaches a semester-long elective course on Holocaust and genocide studies, and worked to earn Canon-Mac the Anti-Defamation League’s “No Place For Hate” designation.
She also teaches Holocaust and genocide studies at Seton Hill University.
Over the years, Pankiewicz has welcomed Holocaust survivors into her Canon-Mac classroom to “bear witness” and provide first-hand testimony of their experiences during the genocide.
And in 2023, she organized for her high school class a screening of the documentary “Repairing the World: Stories from the Tree of Life,” which documents Pittsburgh’s response to hate following the Oct. 27, 2018 shootings at the Squirrel Hill synagogue that took the lives of 11 Jewish worshippers. It was the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
Among those who watched the documentary with Pankiewicz and her students at the Frank Sarris Public Library in Canonsburg were members of Pittsburgh Families Bridging Kindness, a group of survivors and family members of victims of the shooting.
Pittsburgh Families Bridging Kindness took note of Pankiewicz’s commitment to “tikkun olam” – a Jewish concept of “repairing the world.”
The group nominated Pankiewicz for the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh’s Righteous Among the Neighbors Award, which honors non-Jewish Pittsburghers who support the Jewish community and take action to uproot antisemitism.
Pankiewicz and eight other 2025 Righteous Among the Neighbors honorees will be recognized at a celebration on Feb. 12 at the Jewish Community Center in Pittsburgh.
To the members of Pittsburgh Families Bring Kindness, Pankiewicz is an unyielding force in the battle against all forms of hatred and discrimination.
“Meg really goes above and beyond to promote peace and harmony with regard to antisemitism,” said Carol Black, a member of Pittsburgh Families Bridging Kindness and a survivor of the Tree of Life shooting.
Her brother, Richard Gottfried, did not survive.
“When I think about Meg and what she does and how she goes about doing it, she is the perfect person to be afforded this award. There is so much hate in the world today, it’s troublesome. If we can find a way to let young people know the world doesn’t have to be this way and that they can be the difference, that is important. And that is what Meg tries to do, to empower students to make a difference, even if she faces opposition. And if you reach even one student, you make a difference.”
Pankiewicz said she is humbled and honored with the recognition.
“I feel like I do this work for all the people who survived and all of the people who didn’t survive,” said Pankiewicz. “One thing that I’ve noticed is my Jewish friends and professors in doctorate programs would always thank me for doing this work, thank me for telling their stories, and I’m on the other end thinking that I’m the lucky one, that I’m thankful and grateful for the opportunity to share their stories and to stand united against hatred of any kind. They have given my life purpose.”
Pankiewicz credits Holocaust survivor Sam Gottesman, who she met while volunteering at the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, with changing the course of her life.
Gottesman was a teenager in the former Czechoslovakia when Nazi Germany occupied his town. One of seven children, Gottesman was sent to several concentration camps, and only Gottesman, his father and one sister survived.
“I remember vividly meeting this sweet man, Sam, the first Holocaust survivor I met, and the profound impact he had on me,” said Pankiewicz, who called Gottesman “Zayde,” Jewish for “grandfather.” “Knowing him changed every aspect of my life – how I look at the world, how I act.”
The two remained close until Gottesman passed away in 2019 at the age of 95.
Fellowships with the Holocaust Center and other organizations enabled Pankiewicz to complete research and field study throughout Poland, Austria and Belgium, where she visited concentration camps.
She remembers crying at sites like Majdanek Death Camp in Poland, where a mausoleum contains a mound of ashes of the victims killed there. She nearly passed out when she visited Auschwitz.
“Language becomes completely insufficient when you try to describe what you are feeling physically and emotionally when you are standing in the gas chambers and at those sites,” said Pankiewicz.
Pankiewicz calls the Holocaust “the greatest cautionary tale we have,” and said it’s important to teach lessons about such atrocities as the Holocaust – and the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides – to prevent them from happening again.
Allie West, a junior at the University of Connecticut with a major in human rights – and aims to be an attorney specializing in international law, was a student in Pankiewicz’s Holocaust class in 11th grade.
West was moved by how passionately Pankiewicz taught about the Holocaust and talked about how bigotry, racism and hate exists in the world – including the United States – today.
“She exposed us to the horrors of the Holocaust and other genocides, and she didn’t sugarcoat anything because she wanted us to be OK holding uncomfortable truths, and she expressed hope and faith in us students to make a positive difference,” said West. “Her class ended up changing what I wanted to do as an undergraduate. She was always pretty real about realizing that this is the world we live in, but she instilled agency in us to work to do what we can to change things. I can’t express how grateful I am to her.”
Jan. 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, held annually to mark the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and to commemorate the 6 million Jews and millions of others who were killed under Nazi persecution.
For Pankiewicz, teaching Holocaust and genocide classes provides an opportunity “to pass the torch.”
“If you learn history and don’t apply it to your life, it’s just history. I always tell students at the end of the semester, ‘You are a witness now. You know better so you have to do better,'” said Pankiewicz. “I am so lucky that I get to do this work.”