A $360,000 endowment from Zach and Max Bruch will support recurring educational trips to Poland for young Jewish adults through Olami Manhattan’s Holocaust programming.
Olami Manhattan announced on April 14, 2026, that Zach and Max Bruch had established a $360,000 endowment to fund an annual educational trip to Poland for young Jewish adults. Named the Bruch Family Foundation Poland Trip, the programme takes participants to the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps while exploring Jewish history and the Holocaust. The brothers, aged 32 and 28 respectively when the announcement was issued, are co-founders of MyPrize and described the donation as an investment in sustained education and remembrance.
Olami Manhattan presents the Poland trip as the centrepiece of its educational activities and a driver of its year-round Holocaust education programmes. The organisation said its Manhattan location serves a community of 2,000 young adults, creating social and educational opportunities for young Jewish professionals in New York to examine Jewish identity and values. The endowment connects that local programming with Olami’s wider network, which the release said comprised 320 locations across 27 countries.
The annual experience is designed to give participants direct exposure to sites associated with the Holocaust, including Auschwitz and Birkenau, while placing those visits within a broader study of Jewish heritage. Olami Manhattan founder and executive director Rabbi Shmuel Lynn said the trip is intended to strengthen participants’ sense of belonging, identity, pride and responsibility. Zach Bruch said the brothers considered firsthand engagement with this history critical for the next generation, while Max Bruch framed the endowment as a way to build connections across generations through history, identity and community.
Structuring the contribution as an endowment gives the announcement a longer horizon than funding a single trip. According to the release, the donation is intended to create a sustainable pathway through which future groups can participate in the Poland programme and engage personally with Holocaust history. That approach also positions travel as one component of an ongoing educational model, with the annual experience supporting Olami Manhattan’s broader programme of mentorship, social initiatives, Israel advocacy and Holocaust education.
For Olami Manhattan, the funding strengthens a programme it already identifies as central to its educational work rather than creating a separate initiative. The organisation’s emphasis is on combining visits to historically significant locations with continued learning and community engagement in New York. By providing recurring support for the Poland trip, the Bruch brothers’ endowment gives Olami Manhattan a defined financial foundation for maintaining that link between immersive travel, remembrance and year-round Jewish education.
