The Veterans Breakfast Club (VBC) is the nation’s premier non-profit for connecting veterans with their fellow Americans through inspiring stories of service. We’re the place where veterans can share what they’ve seen and done—and where everyone can listen and learn.
UPCOMING EVENTS
The Holocaust did not begin with Auschwitz. Before the gas chambers became instruments of industrialized murder, mobile SS killing squads known as the Einsatzgruppen followed the German army into Eastern Europe, massacring more than a million Jews, Roma, Soviet prisoners, and civilians in forests, ravines, villages, and fields.
After the war, a young American Army investigator named Benjamin “Ben” Ferencz uncovered the Nazis’ own meticulous records of these mass shootings. At just 27 years old—and having never argued a case in court—Ferencz was appointed Chief Prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen Trial at Nuremberg, where twenty-two SS commanders were charged with crimes against humanity in what newspapers called “the biggest murder trial in history.”
Join military historian Colin Heaton as he examines the history of the Einsatzgruppen, the evidence that exposed their crimes, and the landmark trial that helped establish modern international criminal law. Along the way, we’ll explore the remarkable life and legacy of Ben Ferencz, whose pursuit of justice shaped the postwar world and influenced generations of war crimes prosecutions.
Interested in volunteering with the Veterans Breakfast Club? We’d love to meet you.
Join us for an informal Volunteer Information Session to learn about the VBC Welcome Center, our partnership with Phase 4 Learning Center, and the many ways you can help us build a welcoming community for veterans and their families.
We’ll give you a tour of the space, explain what we envision for the Welcome Center, and talk about the volunteer opportunities that are already available—and those we’ll create together as the Center continues to grow.
Our volunteers will help greet veterans and visitors, connect people with resources, assist with our Veterans History Project by interviewing veterans and preserving their stories, photos, and artifacts, and help make the Welcome Center a place where veterans simply enjoy spending time together. We’re also looking for people who want to help shape the future of the space by suggesting programs, events, and activities that will make it an even more vibrant community gathering place.
Whether you can volunteer once a week, once a month, or just occasionally, we’d love to have you join us. Friendly faces, good listeners, history lovers, organizers, and people who simply enjoy helping others are all welcome.
Registration is requested so we know how many people to expect. Please register using the link below. We’ll be using Constant Contact for registration, and your advance registration will help us prepare for the session.
Date: Friday, July 31, 2026
Time: 10:00–11:30 AM
Location: Veterans Breakfast Club Welcome Center
5850 Centre Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15206
VBC Welcome Center Parking Information
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Everyone is always welcome.
The Veterans Breakfast Club (VBC) is the nation’s premier non-profit for connecting veterans with their fellow Americans through inspiring stories of service.
Our goal is to build a nation that understands and values the experiences of our military veterans so that every day is Veterans Day.
We do this by bringing together–in-person and online–men and women from all walks of life, all ages and eras, and every branch of service to talk about what they’ve seen and done. We want to hear how people’s military service has shaped them. “Every Veteran Has a Story” is our slogan. We want to hear every one.
We share the stories we hear in our weekly VBC Bulletin email newsletter and our quarterly VBC Magazine. We also record a weekly podcast, The Scuttlebutt, about military culture from the people who lived it.
We do all this because we believe the best way to thank a Veteran is to listen.
Listening is what the VBC has been doing for the past 15 years, when we held our first small event outside of Pittsburgh. Since then, we’ve held over 1,000 programs in-person and online and have welcomed over 20,000 different people at our events, Veterans and non-Veterans coming together to listen.
We value every veteran’s experience, no matter who they are or when or how they served. We’ve seen up close the power of storytelling, as the memories shared at VBC events connect, heal, educate, and inspire an ever-expanding circle of listeners.
THE VETERANS HISTORY PROJECT
Preserving veterans’ stories so that this living history is never forgotten.
We pair passionate VBC volunteers with military veterans for one-on-one oral history interviews over Zoom. If you are a veteran, or you know a veteran, who would be interested in sharing his or her story with us, let us know. If you are someone interested in conducting these interviews, please reach out!
At any given event, you might hear from the newest members of Space Force to a 101-year-old World War II veteran.
We’ve welcomed Tin Can Sailors and Montford Point Marines, Vietnam Sky Soldiers and Cold War intelligence officers. We’ve heard stories from the Horn of Africa to Antarctica, the Bering Sea to Diego Garcia, and all points in between.
LORAN Coast Guardsmen and Radar Station Airmen have told us about serving in some of the most remote places on earth.
Korean War veterans have borne witness to their “forgotten war.”
Other “forgotten warriors” shared their memories of Beirut, Grenada, and Mogadishu.
Some of the first women authorized for combat shared stories of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of the Purple Hearts they received.
