Founders

Ralph and Doris Martin founded The Martin-Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University in 2000 to raise awareness about the history and legacy of the Holocaust and attend to today’s crises, conflicts, and injustices. Doris Martin (née Szpringer) lived as a child in Bedzin, Poland, and survived the Holocaust as an adolescent in a Nazi labor camp for women, administered by the infamous Gross-Rosen camp.    

Born in December 1926, Doris passed away in her California home on August 3, 2022. Twelve years old when the Nazis invaded her hometown Bedzin, she was deported to Auschwitz and survived Ludwigsdorf, a women’s labor camp. Miraculously, all members of her family survived and reunited after the war. Arriving in the United States in 1950, she later married Ralph Martin. They made Flagstaff their home for many years and founded the Martin-Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University and a smaller center for Conflict Studies at Ben Gurion University, Israel.  

Doris’ family story is told in her memoir, Kiss Every Step. 

We are forever grateful for Doris untiring efforts to educate young people about the Holocaust, and for both Ralph and Doris to create an institute with a mandate for public education and research.