OUR COMMUNITY

24 | JUNE 23 • 2022 

F

urthering the legacy 
of their father, Fred 
“Ziggy” Findling 
(1930-2019), Darren Findling 
of Huntington Woods and 
his sister and brother-in-law, 
Debbie Findling and Steven 
Moss of San Francisco, are 
working with the American 
Jewish Joint Distribution 
Committee (JDC) to fund 
the construction of “Ziggy’s 
Playground.” 
 The play area will be part 
of a new Rwandan affordable 
housing development that 
strives to create opportunities 
and a better quality of life to 
those who survived the 1994 
Rwandan genocide. 
“My father never had an 
opportunity to have a play-

ground because his early 
childhood was spent in surviv-
al mode,” Findling said of how 
his father survived in Nazi 
Germany as an orphan on the 
run until he was brought to 
the United States, all before he 
turned 11. 
“
As a child, he was always in 
survival mode. The creation 
of Ziggy’s Playground is an 
opportunity to give back to a 
community to which I deeply 
connect with their struggles. 
The pain that was caused in 
Rwanda in such a massive, 
horrific way deeply resonated 
with my family.” he said. 
“Most of the world watched 
but then looked away during 
the Holocaust. So, when 
we observed when other 

genocides took place in our 
lifetime, we felt deeply con-
nected.” 
Ziggy’s Playground is locat-
ed at See Far Housing in the 
Rwandan capital of Kigali 
and is a project of Agahozo-
Shalom Youth Village (ASYV), 
a project of the JDC and other 
nonprofit organizations. 

ASYV is the brainchild of 
the late philanthropist Anne 
Heyman, who believed the 1.2 
million Rwandans orphaned 
during the genocide could 
benefit from the creation of a 
kibbutz-styled youth village 
modeled after those created 
in Israel to care for orphaned 
Holocaust survivors. 
ASYV opened to its first 
class in 2008. This summer, 
Findling and family members 
will travel to Rwanda for the 
opening of Ziggy’s Playground 
and celebrate the graduation of 
the ASYV class of 2022. 
So far, $47,000 has been 

Ziggy’s Playground

Family dedicates a playground in Rwanda in 
memory of their father, a Holocaust survivor.

STACY GITTLEMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

8

Part of Ziggy’s 
Playground in Rwanda

