Photos from the Holocaust only capture the moment of the crime, not the abject fear that led up to it. This exhibition attempts to provide a glimpse into the horror, that we never forget that the atrocities were not just carried out by the Nazis but by their neighbors and permitted by the overwhelming majority that remained silent. Today, we’re again seeing what happens when inhumanity is normalized.

She clutches life;
it is all she knows.
The past attracts her.
One grows aware
upon meeting her
of Death.
Time is defined
at the Void:
before/after.
There is an after
and there is not:
children
who are no more—
and more.
There is Death
that is Life
that defies Death
going on
and on
and around
alone in the dark house
with the TV on.

On the morning of July 27, 1944,
in a quiet courtyard in Lwów,

a manhole cover… slowly lifted.

A sewer worker called down into the darkness…
“Come out… You’re free!”

From beneath the earth,
ten figures emerged.

Starved.
Broken.
Barely recognizable as human.

And the man who led them out, Leopold Socha, turned to the stunned crowd and declared:
“This is my work… These are my Jews.”

Fourteen months earlier,
One man made a daring decision.

My grandfather, Ignacy Chiger, a husband, and a father of two young children… engineered a prison break in reverse…
into a prison without walls.

He dug a tunnel.
He broke through three feet of concrete.
And he led his family down into it… into the sewers.
Into darkness.

This is not just a Holocaust story.

It is a story of strategy
of leadership
of what a father will do… when no other options exist.

Readers of my grandfather’s memoir will encounter evil in its rawest form
under both Soviet and Nazi occupation.

But they will also witness something else… a redemption story of Leopold Socha… a sewer worker… a petty thief… who became a savior
and rose as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Out of 150,000 Jews in Lwów,
260 remained alive.

Only one family… with two young children… survived.

My family.

In 1975, my grandfather sat down, for the first time,
and wrote this memoir from memory.

Six months later… he was gone.

I did not publish this book simply to tell his story.

I published it to give his voice the reach,
the clarity,
and the urgency… that this moment demands.

As a second and third generation survivor, I don’t just share history.

I ask audiences to confront it.

What does survival really require?
What does moral courage look like today?

Because memory without responsibility
is simply nostalgia.

Do you remember, in the days of yore, when an Irishman happily served as the President of Israel for a decade? Chaim Herzog, born in Belfast, raised in Dublin, was Israeli President from 1983 to 1993. Since then, Israel-Ireland relations have become, shall we say, rather dodgy.

The Irish population has been increasingly outspoken in their anti-Semitism, accusing Israel of apartheid, occupation, orchestrated famine, and genocide. Medieval blood libels circulate anew throughout the Emerald Isle even though there are far fewer wells to poison in these modern times. Of course with social media, the more outrageous the claim the more quickly it spreads. As of yet, Israel has successfully sidestepped blame for global warming, but who knows what the next accusations will be.

Never do we see marches or rallies in Belfast related to the horrors in Sudan, which is undergoing a true genocide and a real famine (approximately 400,000 dead from violence and starvation in the last five years). No one seems to care. Well, at least no one in Ireland seems to care. Similarly, never do we see angry mobs on the streets of Dublin protesting Putin’s unprovoked and seemingly flippant decision to invade Ukraine, causing the deaths of at least 120,000 people so far as Russian drones target infrastructure and residential apartment buildings. No Russians flags are burnt on the streets of Dublin as one would expect, given that Irish society is so sensitive and statedly appalled to all forms of perceived occupation and colonialism. 

The Kremlin’s egregious and Stalinesque attempt to destroy Ukrainian culture, history, and language, to fully absorb the territory into Mother Russia and erase it from world maps doesn’t seem to prompt any notable mass objection from the Irish. Colonialist intentions and occupation of land while imposing the rule of law doesn’t seem so reprehensible anymore, so perhaps the IRA will stand down after all these years of English Protestant rule over Belfast.

This seems a bafflement, but it is easily and simply explained. The fact is Russian occupation crimes and Sudanese atrocities neither feed nor satisfy the ravenous appetite for Jew hatred and cannot be connected to the currently widespread anti-Semitism within Irish society. Equating British control over Northern Ireland and an Israeli military presence in Judea and Samaria is not just easy propaganda for the willingly ignorant but intentional misinformation that is mass produced into convenient short phrasing that’s perfect for signage and repeated bullhorned chants.

Ireland was quick to join with the ICJ in accusing Israel of genocide. Ireland is advancing a bill to prohibit the importation of all products from territories it deems “occupied,” specifically what is referred to as the “West Bank” and East Jerusalem. In the wake of the October 7 Hamas invasion into Israel and their grotesque and barbaric murders, Ireland thought to reward these heinous acts by recognizing Palestine as a state. The fact that Hamas clearly and unashamedly announced its intention of genocide didn’t matter. The Irish government thought this would appease the residents of Gaza and the West Bank and therefore put an end to their violent ways. It is not unusual to see Palestinian flags displayed inside and outside of Irish restaurants and pubs. Over the years, Ireland has given approximately 400 million pounds and euros to Palestinian causes straight from the pockets of Irish taxpayers. There never seems to be any demand to see the accounting and usage of the funds.

Rarely has a Western Christian country been so blatantly anti-Israel. There are frequent protests outside of Israeli owned hotels in Dublin and Belfast. It is not illegal or controversial for an Irish band’s live concert performance to have signs that say “F*ck Israel” on the screen while the band members wave Hezbollah flags on stage and spew vitriolic rap that would make Nazi skinheads mosh, stomp, and bang their heads fiercely against the stage to the point of blissful concussion.

It would seem these are challenging times regarding Israeli and Irish diplomatic relations, what with the removal of ambassadors and the closing of an embassy. It seems the BDS efforts are doing their damage and the misinformed, uneducated, hateful, sign-wielding, marching, screaming, flag waving, traffic blocking, kilt- and keffiyeh-wearing protesters who don’t seem to be employed, have emerged victorious. Similar to a food co-op in Brooklyn, Belfast will be bereft of Bamba.

But even here, one must be reminded, these appear to be minor squabbles. While diplomacy is challenged and protests are pervasive, real business continues.

With all this tension, there are strong reasons for optimism. It’s encouraging to see substantial deals being done by mature companies who share a strong and hopeful vision of the future. A vision that will transform the important field of cancer treatment regardless of where the technology was developed. Cross border investment and partnerships to build that technology will impact lives for the better.

Last month, Tolmar Int’l LTD, a Dublin-based pharmaceutical company specializing in long- acting injectables in the urology and oncology fields has invested in and partnered with AlphaTau Medical, a Jerusalem-based Israeli medical device company that is developing injectable alpha particle radiation DaRTs for cancer therapy. Together they will market this non-invasive outpatient method for prostate cancer treatment that will hopefully ultimately replace the typical treatment protocols: surgery, chemotherapy, traditional radiation, or a combination thereof. These radioactive DaRTs are injected directly into the tumors, killing the tumors from within, with no damage to surrounding tissue. Patients can go home the same day with no real side effects.

Tolmar did their extensive due diligence and considered this a breakthrough. With the opportunity here for both technological advancement and commercialization, they invested $35 million now and committed up to $161 million if certain milestones are met.

It is reassuring that Israeli R&D, Israeli technologies, therapies, modalities, and patents will always bring pragmatic, carefully considered investment from any country regardless if anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, BDS traffic blockers need to be removed from the very same highway the management teams must drive on to get to the meeting to sign the investment documents.

So Ireland will lack good hummus from Israel, but sadly, I’m certain one day an unfortunate anti-Semite from Dublin will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and his commitment to boycott all products and services from Israel will be greatly tested. Let’s see if he’ll accept a highly effective, non-invasive, cheaper, outpatient method of treating it.

The Tolmar investment in AlphaTau is an example of rational, smart international collaboration and these deals will persist despite all the small-minded rhetoric and hatred simply because the opportunities for major advancement are too great. Israeli developments, innovation, and growth potential will continue to attract capital and it will ultimately squelch the attempts of BDS and its bullhorns.

I grew up in communist Prague in a family where both parents were Holocaust survivors. Both circumstances left marks on me. Living with parents who went through the Holocaust was difficult at times and my experience with communism added additional stress.

No, my parents did not end up in concentration camps; but spending time in hiding was traumatic, especially for my mother. She spoke very little about her and her family’s time in the mountains of Slovakia where they and other refugees were hunted by Nazi and Slovakian fascist troops aided by German shepherds, where they slept on snow, many times hungry and terrified that they did not have enough money so local peasants would not betray them. Only once she mentioned one atrocity: witnessing the murder of a baby ripped from the mother’s arms. But she did not have strength to finish the story.

My mom was marked for life—she panicked when seeing a dog, even a small one and on leash. She always worried when a family member was late and was ready to call the police after a few minutes of waiting. Today she would be diagnosed with PTSD. And perhaps that would go for my father as well: only 60 years after the war, he mentioned he lost an aunt and an uncle in a concentration camp—relatives of whom I have never heard before or after.

After their return home from mountains, my mom and her family were astonished that many people, especially those who actively collaborated with fascist authorities, never heard of the Holocaust; they were surprised that some Jews came back. My grandfather lost his business to “Aryanization,” the war-time theft of Jewish property by “Aryans.” He was able to recover it—until 1948, when it was nationalized by communists. Still, the family soon discovered that some of their remaining property, such as furniture, was looted and was standing in offices of former fascists who reinvented themselves into enthusiastic communists. My mom even noticed women walking in the streets wearing her dresses.

In 1971, my parents published a collection of stories about music and wartime Jewish experience, some based on my mother’s recollections. The book, called Song for the Day of Atonement, was immediately confiscated without a single word of explanation. I have always wondered, “Was it because of the Holocaust connection?” I never found out, but copies from the original and only edition are available in public libraries throughout post-communist Czechia.

As a small child, I heard my parents discussing who was Jewish—that was the most important information about a new acquaintance or friend. Israel was on their plate often, especially when somebody managed to emigrate or escape there. Otherwise, the Holocaust was mentioned, but not discussed in communist Czechoslovakia, though The Diary of Anne Frank was translated and read.

The famous Jewish Museum in Prague consisting of several old synagogues, including the Altneuschul and the old Jewish cemetery in the old Jewish quarter, was well preserved as a source of Western currency supplied by tourists, many of them from West Germany. The museum was filled with Jewish ritual items and memorabilia collected by Nazis for the purpose of establishing a museum of “decadent” culture. Theresienstadt was well maintained—the same tourists coming there as well.

My parents started taking us to a synagogue and the Jewish community center in 1967 when “socialism with a human face,” a slogan of the Prague Spring, was brewing to be born in January of 1968 and being extinguished by the Soviet invasion in August. After that, being Jewish and discussing the Holocaust became completely taboo for two more decades. In schools we were presented with three groups of enemies faced by communist countries: “American Imperialists,” “German Revanchists” (Germans expelled from the Sudetenland in 1945) and, yes, “Zionists”—we Jews! Israel was vilified and old people were not allowed to visit their relatives living in Israel they had not seen in decades. Jewish composers, such as Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Gustav Mahler, were never performed. Franz Kafka and Franz Werfel—two Prague-born, German-speaking Jewish writers—were not published in new editions. But the tourists continued coming and the Jewish Museum stayed open.

I came to Canada in 1976. I was surprised by the vibrant and free Jewish life, which was a totally novel experience. Today I am surprised and dismayed by what’s happening in Canada with anti-Semitism spreading like wildfire and with the inaction of the Canadian government; and, until recently, I was grateful for moving to the U.S. some years ago. My gratitude went far, but not anymore. Anti-Israel and anti-Zionist propaganda turns out to be a purely anti-Semitic enterprise and, together with total distortion and inversion of the Holocaust, has been spreading throughout the world and infecting the U.S. as well.

According to Warren Kinsella, the author of Digital Intifada, preparations by Hamas and associates to besmirch Israel with claims of crimes against Palestinians starting with the “Naqba” and culminating in accusations of “genocide” and portraying Israel and Jews as Nazis and Palestinians as their victims have been made for decades. Hamas, et al.—like their communist spy handlers before them—have hijacked and mastered infiltrating the Internet and social media, managing to manipulate unsuspecting, mostly young, people into buying into their lies. Constant exposure to false messages together with ignorance of history through messaging—X, TikTok, Twitch, and other sites—convinced people that Jews and Israel are evil.

After more than 80 years since the end of the Second World War, the Holocaust has become ancient history, especially with the number of Holocaust survivors rapidly declining and many people happy to hear that if Jews are genocidal then, perhaps, they deserved what they got.

And, perhaps, various European governments feel relieved from the guilt they have carried for their complicity in letting Jews perish, or at least not doing more to save them. We should not forget that, for the last two millennia, European history is tainted with widespread anti-Semitism. Jews were accused of deicide (the murder of Jesus), using the blood of Christian children in baking matzah, and in spreading the bubonic plague to list just the most outrageous claims. It is hard to shake off old habits.

In addition, the emergence of large and restless Muslim minorities in Europe pressures European governments into reprimands and sanctions of Israel. The absurdity of European actions appears nonsensical, but is, nevertheless, expanding. In times when anti-Israel protests are becoming more threatening and outrightly anti-Semitic, when Jews are called Nazis and Palestinians their victims, when the war in Gaza is called a “genocide” and compared to the Holocaust, the understanding of the real Holocaust is gone and Jews and their institutions and synagogues are attacked and subjected to physical abuse and destruction on the streets of European and Canadian cities.

You would think that leaders of those countries and E.U. would strongly come against these hate crimes, but, no, they don’t. There is silence, limited police actions, or worthless proclamations by some officials that these hate crimes are “not acceptable.” None of this is followed by action, only by silence. Pro-Hamas protesters are allowed to roam free, defended by authorities as “free speech.” That Jews are afraid to walk on the streets of London, Amsterdam, Toronto, and even New York is becoming normal. Authorities are either afraid to interfere, or they tacitly approve of increasingly more violent activity. Not many politicians and leaders feel threatened by such attacks and are more interested in keeping Islamists as their voters.

Some European countries found a scapegoat for their problems identified by pro-Hamas mobs—Israel. The most recent example is the demand by France and the U.K. for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon. The French Foreign Minister requested a U.N. Security Council emergency meeting to stop Israel’s defensive activity in Lebanon. One would suggest that France should condemn Hezbollah for its aggression against Israel rather than playing “benevolent” neo-colonialist in Lebanon, its former colony. The Italian premiere Giorgia Meloni, together with other European leaders, is calling out Israel for mistreatment of members of the most recent Gaza flotilla, that these people are entitled “human dignity.” It did not cross her mind that the flotilla people had no respect for Israelis and were only interested in anti-Israel propaganda (while having sex and doing drugs). It did not occur to her that Jews attacked in or expelled from Italian establishments and a gay Jewish group chased out of a pride parade in Rome also deserve protection and acknowledgement of their human dignity.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that he appointed a Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion to combat anti-Semitism. It sounds nice until one notices who the members are—at least one of them is a Muslim apologist for terrorist organizations. I think that I know what this council will advise to fight: “Islamophobia.” Does his declaration that the measures, as reported in the Canadian Jewish News, do not mean “curtailing freedom of expression” and “are not constraints on legitimate criticism of any government on any subject anywhere” imply that the anti-Israel protests may continue and may include harassment of people living in predominantly Jewish residential areas of Toronto and other Canadian cities and will be still be considered “free speech?”

Unfortunately, current events in the U.S. do not promise good outcomes either. Violent protests near synagogues, particularly in New York City, intend to raise fear in congregants and discourage them from organizing and attending events about Israel. This is also called “free speech.”

What is even more worrisome is that not only many candidates, mostly on the Democratic side, running for Congress in midterm elections are either disavowing Israel and even expressing anti-Semitic views, but that they are supported by vile anti-Semites, such as Hasan Piker. And what is even more ominous is that they are endorsed by mainstream members of Congress, such as Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, and the less mainstream but vocal and influential Bernie Sanders.

These supporters are deceiving themselves by acknowledging that though some of these candidates are problematic (e.g., Graham Platner) but insisting that election of these candidates is vital to turn the Congress Democratic. I am not very optimistic, especially if people are constantly exposed to people like Hasan Piker and Tucker Carlson (and many more). Why the New York Times serving as a platform for these people is unclear to me.

This might be good time for Jewish voters who, for the most part vote, traditionally for Democratic hopefuls to switch sides or at least not vote for certain candidates. We need to hope that voters know better than our current Democratic senators and representatives and will use their sechel (sixth sense).

I removed the wrapping,
Washed it clean,
Prepared myself,
To expose the unseen.

Stem and root sliced off,
Discarded as unfit,
Nor useful or connected,
The recipe did not permit.

Off came the skin,
Peeled back its veneer,
Fragile but protective,
The top layer appeared.

Tears welled up,
A fresh cut revealed,
Memories hidden,
Life had concealed.

Another layer removed,
Closer to the core,
Some will embrace,
What too many ignore.

Such beauty and pure,
The bulb I could see,
Unblemished by growth,
Still guarded from me.

The truth if told,
Of struggle and revival,
Ingredients for battle,
Tales of survival.

Let it recall and let it shine,
Its authentic identity,
Then plant and regrow,
For the future will be,

Fraught with darkness,
Tested by the night,
To emerge stronger once again,
And reach toward the light.

Holocaust education remains one of the most important historical and moral responsibilities within schools, museums, and civic institutions. Historical accuracy, survivor testimony, archival preservation, and genocide education continue to play an essential role in helping students understand one of history’s greatest human catastrophes.

Yet educators today face an increasingly urgent challenge: how to help students move beyond memorizing historical facts toward understanding the human consequences of prejudice, dehumanization, and social division in the present day.

The Facility, LEDI Center, and Lives Eliminated, Dreams Illuminated program was developed in response to that challenge. LEDI offers a permanent facility, traveling facility, and portable facility to meet the growing need.

Spearheaded by the Dr. David M. Milch Foundation, and now its own 501(c)(3), LEDI combines Holocaust education, art, storytelling, restorative educational practices, and reflective discussion to help students examine oppression through the lens of individual human lives. Rather than teaching the Holocaust exclusively through political timelines or historical abstraction, the program asks students to consider who these victims were as people: what they hoped for, what futures they imagined, and what responsibilities exist today in preventing hatred and dehumanization from repeating in new forms.

At the center of LEDI is a four-hour immersive field trip experience that brings middle and high school students into direct engagement with the exhibition through guided discussions, audio narratives, reflective writing, music, and art-making activities. The field trip program has already reached more than 6,000 students across New Jersey and Florida, while the Foundation’s broader curriculum integration efforts now reach more than 15,000 students annually in classrooms.

The educational model is grounded in a central belief: students are more likely to recognize the dangers of prejudice when they can connect intellectually and emotionally to the humanity of others.

Unlike traditional educational approaches that often position students as passive observers of history, LEDI encourages active engagement. Students analyze portraits, listen to stories connected to individual victims, examine symbolism within artwork, and participate in discussions focused on identity, prejudice, empathy, resilience, and moral responsibility.

The experience begins by reframing how students encounter Holocaust history.

Rather than introducing victims primarily through statistics or historical summaries, LEDI focuses on individuality. Students are asked to think about the lives that existed before persecution: friendships, interests, talents, dreams, insecurities, families, and futures that were interrupted.

One activity asks students to reflect on the life of Holocaust victim Miriam Klein and answer a simple question: “What would you have hoped for Miriam and her life?”

The responses reveal the way students begin reconnecting history to humanity:

• “Miriam could go to college and achieve her dreams.”

• “I want her to become an artist.”

• “She could have a Big Mac and do anything she wanted.”

• “I want her to fall in love.”

• “Miriam can go to a sleepover and share a secret.”

What makes these reflections meaningful is their simplicity. Students do not respond with historical analysis or abstract language. Instead, they focus on ordinary human experiences—education, friendship, creativity, belonging, growing up. The victims of the Holocaust stop existing only as historical symbols and begin existing as individuals whose lives should have continued.

That shift changes the way many students begin thinking about prejudice and oppression more broadly.

Throughout the field trip, students are introduced to the idea that hatred rarely begins with violence. The Holocaust did not begin with concentration camps. It began much earlier—through language, exclusion, stereotypes, indifference, and the gradual normalization of prejudice.

One framework explored during the program traces that progression:

• Judgment becomes prejudgment.
• Prejudgment becomes prejudice.
• Prejudice becomes hate.
• Hate, when normalized, becomes oppression.

Students often connect to this idea quickly because they already recognize forms of exclusion within their own lives and communities. Bullying, assumptions about identity, online cruelty, social isolation, and stereotyping are experiences many students have either witnessed or encountered personally. LEDI helps students understand how these behaviors connect to larger historical patterns of dehumanization.

Importantly, the program does not approach students as passive recipients of information. Students are encouraged to reflect, question, discuss, and respond creatively to what they encounter.

Art plays a central role in this process.

The portraits inside LEDI are not designed simply to illustrate tragedy. They are intended to restore individuality and identity to lives that were systematically erased. Students spend time studying facial expressions, symbolism, color, posture, and atmosphere within the paintings while listening to accompanying narratives and music. Through that process, many students begin asking different kinds of questions—not only about what happened historically, but about how societies learn to stop seeing certain people as fully human.

The reflective writing completed during the field trip reveals the depth of those conversations.

When asked how oppression impacts people’s lives, one student wrote:

“Oppression shatters and destroys people’s lives, dreams, and emotions… it dehumanizes people, and having dreams and emotions is part of being human.”

Another student reflected: “Oppression can impact people’s lives, dreams, and emotions because if you keep building on oppression it can turn into genocide or making laws to dehumanize a select religion or race.”

Students are also asked to think about empathy not as agreement, but as perspective-taking and human recognition.

One student explained: “If you cannot relate to what they have been through, you can try to view the world in their perspective.”

Another wrote: “Don’t judge people based on their look; understand their experiences. Even if your experiences are different from each other, you’ll still find something in common.”

These reflections are important because they demonstrate how students begin connecting historical education to present-day behavior and relationships. The conversations move beyond the Holocaust alone and into broader discussions about identity, dignity, prejudice, and community responsibility.

One of the most significant shifts educators observe during the field trip experience is students’ growing willingness to participate in difficult conversations. Students who initially approach the visit as a history assignment often begin engaging more personally with the material. They ask more thoughtful questions, participate more openly in discussions, and make clearer connections between historical injustice and issues affecting their own communities.

Teachers have reported students continuing these conversations after returning to school. Some students begin speaking more openly about bullying and exclusion within their classrooms. Others become more willing to share personal experiences or discuss difficult social topics through writing and art.

The final portion of the field trip focuses on action and responsibility.

Students are asked to identify issues within their own schools or communities—bullying, loneliness, racism, anti-Semitism, exclusion, or online harassment—and then reflect on one realistic action they could personally take to improve their environment.

The responses are often intentionally practical:

• “Speak up when someone is bullied.”

• “Listen before judging.”

• “Defend people when others don’t.”

• “Invite someone to sit with me.”

The significance of these responses lies in their scale. LEDI does not ask students to solve global injustice in a single moment. Instead, the program emphasizes that communities are shaped through everyday interpersonal choices: whether individuals choose to include others, challenge prejudice, or remain silent when harm occurs.

This philosophy is closely tied to one of the program’s central concepts: becoming an “upstander” rather than a bystander.

Students are encouraged to think about civic responsibility not as something abstract or distant, but as something practiced daily through relationships, classrooms, conversations, and community behavior. The field trip consistently reinforces the idea that prejudice grows when indifference becomes normalized, and that small acts of courage can interrupt that process before it escalates.

The role of storytelling and creative expression within the program also appears to have a meaningful impact on students. Many students describe art as a way to build empathy, create dialogue, and help communities better understand one another’s experiences.

One student wrote: “We can use art to show what we want to achieve to other people. This allows us to connect with others and build empathy.”

Another reflected: “It helps us share our stories so we can connect to each other and build empathy. Stories will help us think about each other’s lives and understand the challenges we’ve been through.”

These reflections point toward one of LEDI’s broader educational goals: helping students understand that storytelling itself can be a tool for human connection and social responsibility.

This approach is particularly relevant at a time when many educators are grappling with how to teach difficult history in ways that remain meaningful for younger generations. As the number of living Holocaust survivors declines, programs like LEDI represent an evolving effort to preserve memory while also helping students connect that history to contemporary moral questions.

The field trip model attempts to address this challenge by combining historical learning with opportunities for reflection, dialogue, creativity, and personal responsibility. Rather than asking students only to remember the past, LEDI encourages them to think about how they participate in shaping the present.

Ultimately, the program aims to leave students with more than historical information alone.

It aims to help them recognize how prejudice develops, how dehumanization becomes normalized, and how empathy, attention, and moral courage can strengthen communities before hatred escalates into something far more dangerous.

That may be one of the most important lessons Holocaust education can offer future generations—not only about history, but about humanity itself.

For more information, please visit ledicenter.com.

For Dr. David M. Milch, remembrance is not passive. It is an act of responsibility.

As the son of two Holocaust survivors, Dr. Milch has spent much of his life grappling with the profound legacy of inherited trauma, memory, resilience, and moral obligation. That identity has deeply shaped both his worldview and his desire to ensure that the Holocaust is never forgotten, while also creating pathways for humanity to recognize suffering across cultures, communities, and generations.

Through the Dr. David M. Milch Foundation, Dr. Milch has dedicated himself to two interconnected missions: youth mentoring and arts for social impact. Guided by the Jewish principle of tikkun olam—repairing the world—his work seeks to foster empathy, civic responsibility, and human connection in an increasingly polarized age.

A graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Milch built a distinguished career as an entrepreneur in the life sciences and technology sectors. Yet, alongside his work in medicine and innovation, he has remained deeply committed to philanthropy rooted in humanism and historical memory.

That commitment is perhaps most powerfully embodied in Lives Eliminated, Dreams Illuminated (LEDI), the Foundation’s groundbreaking exhibition and education initiative dedicated to Holocaust remembrance, dialogue, and healing through art. The exhibition reimagines the lives of young women and girls murdered during the Holocaust through paintings, music, storytelling, and educational programming. But, for Dr. Milch, LEDI is about more than history alone.

“The Holocaust happened,” he says plainly—a foundational truth and moral stake in the ground for him as a child of survivors. Yet he also believes that no one community has a monopoly on suffering, and that one of the great challenges of humanity is learning how to acknowledge pain without turning it into competition.

As a “2G,” Dr. Milch understands that memory can either harden people into isolation or open them toward deeper compassion. His choice has been the latter. Through LEDI and the Foundation’s broader work, he seeks to create spaces where difficult histories can be confronted honestly while also building bridges between communities that have experienced trauma, discrimination, hatred, or violence.

Central to that mission is his belief in the transformative power of art.

Dr. Milch sees art and the artist as essential tools for emotional connection. Facts alone, he argues, are often insufficient to help people truly understand painful histories. Art allows people to feel before they judge. It opens a human doorway into stories that might otherwise feel distant, overwhelming, or abstract.

In interviews about LEDI, Dr. Milch has described how paintings based on photographs of Holocaust victims can create an emotional resonance that traditional education alone sometimes cannot. Music, visual imagery, storytelling, and performance become vehicles for empathy—helping audiences, especially young people, connect emotionally to histories of anti-Semitism, genocide, racism, and intolerance.

Importantly, he believes this artistic framework extends beyond Jewish history. Dr. Milch has consistently emphasized that all human stories deserve recognition and dignity. The Foundation’s work intentionally creates dialogue across communities, acknowledging both the uniqueness of the Holocaust and the broader reality of human suffering throughout history.

This philosophy has shaped the expansion of LEDI into schools and communities across the United States. In Jacksonville, Florida, the Foundation helped develop Holocaust and genocide educational programming for Duval County Public Schools, reaching thousands of students annually. The initiative combines historical education with artistic engagement and conversations about becoming “upstanders” rather than bystanders in the face of hatred and injustice.

At the heart of Dr. Milch’s work is a refusal to surrender to cynicism or extremism. He believes deeply in dialogue, humility, and the possibility of common ground. In a world increasingly driven by outrage and division, he hopes to create experiences that draw people back toward empathy, reflection, and shared humanity.

For Dr. Milch, illumination is both metaphor and mission.

It is the light of memory carried forward by a son of survivors. It is the light art can shine into difficult truths. And it is the light he hopes future generations will carry into a more compassionate and connected world.

Riefenstahl, Ishioka, Arbus: a Sadean discipline of looking

This essay is a walk through my own cabinet of curiosities, guided by a set of questions I would rather not ask: why a certain beauty moves me, what kind of hold it has on my body and my thinking, and how far that hold colludes with a smooth, amoral power that lets form shine while the screams stay offstage. I move between Leni Riefenstahl’s stadiums and reefs, Eiko Ishioka’s advertising and Olympic ceremonies, Diane Arbus’s deformed faces, the baroque crime tableaux of the television series Hannibal, and the intellectual circle around Susan Sontag. They share little on the surface except the ability to seize the eye and hold it longer than is safe. I keep the Marquis de Sade in the background as a discipline rather than a hero, a knife laid on the table to cut through the alibis that usually protect such pleasures. Riefenstahl stands here for beauty enlisted by power, Ishioka for beauty used as force, and Arbus for something more fragile that I can only name later. What follows is an attempt to let each of these figures speak, then to turn the same impolite question on them and on myself: who is enjoying what, and what has to be pushed out of sight to keep that enjoyment intact?

Opening the Pandora’s box

There is a kind of image that cuts me more deeply than I would like to admit.

A body held in clean light: an Olympic diver suspended in air, a Nubian wrestler, a swimmer inside a vertical shaft of blue. The framing is so strict that my eye obeys before thought has time to form. The arc of the back, the pale figure against a dark crowd, the rhythm of shoulders and flags: everything falls into line with a muscular calm.

My first response is pleasure. I am not ashamed of that, and I will not lie about it.

Only afterwards do I remember who made the image, and what it was serving.

Leni Riefenstahl is, for me, the clearest case of what I call the beauty of power: an eye that makes domination look luminous and inevitable, followed by decades of insisting that she loved only “form,” “harmony,” and “nature.” Eiko Ishioka, much later, lives out the power of beauty: a woman who falls for the same visual voltage, turns it toward Dracula, Tarsem Singh, Olympic spectacle and advertising, and then watches her own name dissolve into the credits. Diane Arbus stands on another axis: beauty with no request for permission, the beauty of those who never agreed to be acceptable in the first place. What moves me in her work is a different kind of connection, a brief, exposed sharing of meaning between photographer and subject, what I call the beauty of resonance.

Behind these figures I keep a fourth presence: Sade, less as a hero than as an instrument, a scalpel I have used more than once on myself. He strips away every noble story that says “this pleasure is for a higher good.” In his world there is no God, no History, no Revolution waiting to redeem what is done to a body. Pleasure and power meet directly. That lack of alibi is what I need from him.

When I speak of a “Sadean stance” here, I am not borrowing his cruelty or his politics. I am taking one discipline: refuse alibis for seduction. In Sade’s world, power is never washed clean by God, Nation, History, Revolution, or “the oppressed.” When someone hurts someone else, they do it because they want to, and he does not veil that fact with theology or dialectics. That refusal of consolation matters. For the purposes of this essay, a Sadean stance means that whenever ideology or moral rhetoric appears with beauty, I ask a narrow, impolite question: who is enjoying what, why, and what does that enjoyment need to ignore?

With that Sadean scalpel on the table, one I am prepared to turn on myself, I move through Riefenstahl, Ishioka, Arbus, Sontag’s circle, and my own responses.

Riefenstahl: the beauty of power and the seduction of the eye

Calling Riefenstahl (1902–2003) a mere technician would be comfortable. The Sadean discipline I have set myself does not allow that.

From Triumph des Willens (1934) and Olympia (1938) to The Last of the Nuba (1973) and the underwater photographs, the same temperament keeps surfacing: hard axes, clean diagonals, sculptural bodies, controlled space. Crowds are drilled into legible shapes. Torch processions and rallies are designed so that, from the camera’s height, individual bodies disappear and the mass resolves into pattern. In Olympia, the athlete is isolated as an object of worship: the diver in mid-air, the runner trimmed against sky, the discus thrower held just before release. In the Nuba sequences, dark muscle replaces Aryan flesh. Their outlandishly elongated, exquisite bodies carry a strange echo of the gorgeous creature of Giger’s Alien. In the late underwater films and photographs, human figures mostly recede. Shoals of fish, fans of coral, and drifting plants become the new cast—an ocean vivarium transformed into saturated Wagnerian bursts of pattern and light.

This is more than competent camera work. It amounts to a doctrine of form. Beauty appears where bodies or seascapes fall into proportion and noise is driven out of the frame. My own response is physical. My eye craves this symphony. That appetite is part of the danger and the temptation.

I also know that the framing acts as an aphrodisiac of power. The gratification lies in seeing disorder replaced by one rhythm: torches lifted together, columns in step, a leader fixed where all gazes converge, the Nubians glistening with sweat, the fish in an intoxicating orgy of existence. Power becomes lovable because it has been composed so elegantly. Seen with Sade’s question in mind, the scene is not complicated: someone is taking pleasure in the sight of bodies and creatures turned into obedient, breath-taking ornaments.

The television series Hannibal (2013–2015) adds another configuration of beauty and violence in this same field. Its crime scenes are arranged as tableaux: bodies turned into trees or totems, organs laid out with the care of a still-life painter, color graded like a scent advertisement. The murders revolt. And still, the images are sensuous, clever, deliberately delectable. That tension is not an accident. The show invites the viewer to admire the composition while knowing exactly what is being shown. My own response splits: part of me recoils, another part is charmed by the staging and the calm intelligence of the camera. The easy defense is “this is only fiction.” On the level of actual bodies, that is true. On the level of training the eye, it is less innocent. Beauty here does not serve the state, as in Riefenstahl, but it does serve a habit of mind: learning to separate aesthetic pleasure from ethical horror, and to keep both running at once.

John Fowles gives a harsher version of this unease in The Magus (1965). There is a cultivated Nazi officer who plays classical piano with real feeling and skill while torture goes on nearby. At a certain point, the protagonist hears music and screams together. The officer feels no contradiction. Bach and the cry belong to one aesthetic field. This is close to the space in which Riefenstahl moves. The scream is usually offscreen, but always nearby. My own reflex is to split them, to enjoy the music and file the other sound as “context.” In Sade’s terms, that reflex is simply pleasure defending itself.

Later, Riefenstahl speaks of herself as a kind of innocent. At times, she reminds me of a child who discovers that pulling the legs off a fly leaves an interesting figure on the table. The act is cruel; the fascination is fixed on the symmetry. Her post-war statements repeat the same line: she loved beauty and athletics; she was “apolitical”; she only filmed what was already there. From a Sadean angle, this is a coarse excuse. She knew enough about the project she was glorifying. She chose the pattern over the body.

Susan Sontag’s essay “Fascinating Fascism” (1975) tears at this self-image. She tracks Riefenstahl’s lies about her proximity to Hitler, her claim that the Nuremberg rally of 1934 was not staged for the camera, her later repackaging as a neutral explorer of nature and the body, and the way fascist imagery reappears in Nuba and in S/M style. Sontag is sharp about the laundering of the aesthetic. What she does not linger on is the depth of the seduction. She lays out the machinery of allure but writes as if she herself were untouched by it.

There I part company with her. I know the pull. I feel it more clearly because of someone who seems, at first, far from Riefenstahl: Diane Arbus. Riefenstahl’s images present bodies eager to be accepted by power, to be chosen as its ideal ornament. Arbus will come back later as the opposite pole. For now it is enough to say that I feel the tug of both: Riefenstahl’s severe ordering of the ideal, and Arbus’s faces that refuse the ideal and stare back.

Riefenstahl through Sontag; and Zox-Weaver, Onfray, Fallaci against Sontag

Since Riefenstahl is such a catalytic case of the beauty of power, I want to take time with one of her most notable critics, Susan Sontag (1933–2004). I will sketch how Sontag handled Riefenstahl, mainly relying upon Annalisa Zox-Weaver’s reading of Sontag herself, especially her reconstruction of Sontag’s drafts and notes in the UCLA archives, and finally bring in Michel Onfray and Oriana Fallaci—not as commentators who wrote on Sontag, but as two lines of argument I apply to Sontag’s stance.

Ishioka knew Sontag. She worked under an intellectual sky shaped in Paris and refracted through New York, a sky Sontag helped import and legitimize: Sartre, Beauvoir, Genet; later Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Lacan, Barthes. Sontag admired these Parisian caviar revolutionaries, their talents and militancy, their fusion of art and politics, and she enjoyed being the one who translated them for an Anglophone public.

Sontag did not begin as Riefenstahl’s prosecutor. As Zox-Weaver shows, Sontag in the mid-1960s first stages herself as a defender of the aesthetic realm. In an essay on style, Sontag argues that content is basically bait: a lure that brings the reader’s or viewer’s attention to the formal transformations in the work of art. That, she argues, is how we can, in good conscience, cherish works that would be morally repellent if judged only by subject matter. In that context she names Triumph of the Will and Olympia as “masterpieces.” The Nazi propaganda, she admits, “is there,” yet something else is there, too. In other words, the ideal spectator in this scheme is the one who sees “Hitler” rather than Hitler, the “1936 Olympics” rather than the 1936 Olympics, and rises above indignation or approval into pure contemplation.

It is hard to imagine a posture farther from Sade’s refusal of alibi. Here is a woman who saw the same films that trouble me, felt the pull, and turned her own susceptibility into a badge of higher intelligence. It is also a safe posture. This detachment costs Sontag nothing in her own circle. It demands no reckoning with her attraction to the images, and no friction with the intellectual world that surrounds her.

As Zox-Weaver shows, in Sontag’s essay “Fascinating Fascism,” she performs a reversal. Triumph of the Will becomes “the most successful, most purely propagandistic film ever made.” Riefenstahl’s Nuba book is treated as an extension of the same aesthetic into coffee-table exotica, and a slim volume on SS uniforms becomes a case study in the sexualization of Nazism. The argument is often persuasive. Sontag tears apart Riefenstahl’s lies about her proximity to Hitler, her claim that the rallies were not staged for the camera, and her rebranding as a neutral artist of “primal” bodies.

Now imagine three readers in the room with that essay: one real, Annalisa Zox-Weaver, and two imagined, Michel Onfray and Oriana Fallaci. From where I sit, all three, in different ways, are or would be irritated by Sontag’s shortcomings.

Of these three, Zox-Weaver is the only actual reader of Sontag’s drafts in the UCLA archive, and everything I know about those drafts comes via her 2025 essay “The Feminist, the Filmmaker, and the Führer.” She traces versions of “Fascinating Fascism” where an anxious preface briefly appears and then disappears. In those pages, Sontag admits that shifts in popular taste make judgments seem “dishonest, almost in bad taste,” worries about dark longings coming out into the open, and warns that silence about such changes leaves “us even more vulnerable than we already are.” (The wording I quote here follows Zox-Weaver’s transcription of Sontag’s fourth draft.) Then Sontag cuts that prologue. It revealed too much: concern about fascism, but also anxiety about her own attraction to Riefenstahl’s imagery and about the desires circulating in her milieu. The published essay opens instead like a court case: “First exhibit. Here is a woman…”

Zox-Weaver is brilliant at reconstructing this shift and the pride behind it. She calls out the self-importance, the envy, the self-shielding. She shows how Sontag moves from the risky admission “I am also susceptible to this” to the safer position “I am the one who diagnoses everyone else’s susceptibility.” What Zox-Weaver underplays, to my ear, is the timidity. Sontag chooses the safest object for her moral severity. She turns her full seriousness on an aging German filmmaker and on Nazi kitsch, while keeping a tactful silence about the Parisian theorists and radicals on whom she depended, whose own flirtations with violence, Maoism, pedophilia (in Foucault’s case), and elegant anti-Semitism (though not in Sartre and Beauvoir’s) would have been more dangerous to confront. She knows where the live wires are and keeps her hands off. That, I would add to Zox-Weaver’s file, is a form of cowardice.

Onfray, if we bring him into the same room, drags the background forward. His great labor is to refuse the idea that the Paris canon is sacred weather. He lines up Sartre, Beauvoir, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, and the rest like a gallery of compromised saints and knocks them from their plinths. He presents himself as speaking against the “court philosophers” who provided glamor for regimes and movements that crushed bodies, whether under Soviet Stalinism, in Maoist China, or in the various anti-Semitic currents they were willing to excuse. On that point, Sontag remains almost entirely silent.

If Onfray had read Sontag on Riefenstahl, he would not stay with Riefenstahl for long. He would ask why the same cold light is not turned on the friends, mentors, and idols whose names float through Sontag’s essays. He would see in her silence about that circle the classic reflex of an insider: the courage to condemn a distant emblem of evil, and the reluctance to expose the complicities of one’s own house. In his fashion he performs one operation Sontag never quite risks. He treats the sky under which she moves as an object of moral scrutiny.

Fallaci (1929–2006), the third reader, comes from another angle again. She does not grow up between lofts and seminars. She liked to recall that she had been “a little girl fighting as a partisan against Nazi-Fascism.” She spent her life interviewing presidents, dictators, revolutionaries, often at real personal risk. She was furious and stubborn, and, in her later years, wrote about Islam, anti-Semitism, and the West in a language shaped by the wound she carried from those early battles. She was also one of the first to warn that parts of the left-wing intelligentsia would flirt with, or even embrace, Islamist movements.

If Fallaci reads Sontag’s early defense of Triumph of the Will and later prosecution of it, I imagine her impatience would be simple. She would have interviewed Riefenstahl as well as Sontag and then asked both of them: “Where were you when it mattered? And where are you when it matters now?” For Fallaci, the idea that truth always sits in the middle is not sophistication but betrayal. Sometimes, she insists, truth gathers on one side; pretending otherwise serves those who hold power and guns. She grants no prestige to suspended judgment. In this sense, she is far from what is now called “politically correct.” The whole notion of the “ideal spectator” floats, for her, in an airless room. Images are not just for contemplation; they are tools regimes use to prepare real violence. Detachment at a safe distance from risk is not a higher form of ethics. It is what you can afford when you are not in the line of fire.

Set against that, Sontag’s fascination with which viewers may safely enjoy fascist imagery feels like a salon problem. Where Sontag presides over a séance of taste, deciding with which images the elite can play without moral contamination, Fallaci prefers the interrogation room. Her long interviews with Kissinger, Khomeini, Arafat, the Shah have one aim: strip away justifications, expose vanity, force the man in front of her to hear his own words. She is not beyond indignation and approval; she is fueled by indignation, and by a partisan memory of what fascism did to ordinary lives. She is willing to risk her own body for the questions she asks. Sontag, in contrast, risks reputation within a circle, but not the circle itself.

From my angle, all three—Zox-Weaver, Onfray, and Fallaci—reveal a different face of Sontag’s double talk around Reifenstahl. Zox-Weaver exposes the pivot from seduced viewer to moral judge and the pride that accompanies it. Onfray exposes the refusal to apply that same severity to Sontag’s own intellectual sky. Fallaci exposes the distance between salon courage and the kind that costs something. Together they make my own verdict harsher than Zox-Weaver’s cool irritation about vanity and envy. Facing Riefenstahl, Sontag is not just pompous: she is careful to aim her boldness where it will not endanger her affiliations.

And I am not exempt from their scrutiny. I am close to Sontag in education and habits, close to Onfray in my impatience with fashionable nihilism, close to Fallaci in my distrust of “political correctness” as a moral pose. I recognize myself in Sontag’s sentences, in Onfray’s bluntness, in Fallaci’s refusal to bend. I also enjoy standing at a slight angle to each of them, harvesting what I want without paying their full price. That, too, is a strategy of safety. The Sadean discipline demands that I name it as such: another form of enjoyment, another alibi I would prefer not to see.

Ishioka: the power of beauty and the cost of bracketing

Eiko Ishioka (1938–2012) enters as another worker of images, another woman intent on controlling the frame. For readers who do not know her name, you almost certainly know some of her work. The red armor and blue velvet gowns in Coppola’s Dracula (1992); the impossible white and crimson costumes that turn Jennifer Lopez into a moving icon in The Cell (2000); the gold-and-blood visuals of Immortals (2011); the candy-poisoned fairy-tale surfaces of Mirror, Mirror (2012); the massed drummers and scroll-like banners at the Běijīng Olympics (2008). All of that comes from the same eye.

She begins in Tōkyō advertising in the 1960s, jolting conservative visuals with muscular women, uncanny poses, disruptive compositions. From there she moves into theatre and film: Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), Dracula, The Cell, The Fall (2006), Immortals, Mirror, Mirror. She designs uniforms and outerwear for several national teams at the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympics, and later serves as director of costume design for the opening ceremony of the Běijīng 2008 Olympics, drilling thousands of bodies into a single, terrifyingly unified image. She creates album covers and posters that sink into a city’s visual memory. Her signature is a kind of aggressive clarity: bodies turned into living calligraphy, color pushed until it almost vibrates, silhouettes that claim the whole screen. In her memoir, she describes Riefenstahl as a woman driven by three passions—reverence for nature, creative fervor, and Eros—and she calls the twentieth century a time when women artists at last outran men. She clearly wants Riefenstahl inside that lineage. For Ishioka herself, the satisfaction lies in making images that dominate the field and feel unmistakably hers. Her life is a long experiment in the power of beauty.

Ishioka does not encounter Riefenstahl as a distant case study. She handles her work directly. First, she conceives a major Tōkyō exhibition of The Last of the Nuba and edits the Japanese Nuba volume, presenting Riefenstahl’s images of scarified, elongated bodies to a Japanese public as a kind of ultimate athletic beauty. Later, she curates a second show at Bunkamura devoted to Riefenstahl’s life and images, and brings Riefenstahl herself to walk through it. She moves inside those photographs with the confidence of someone who could have taken them. When she writes about Riefenstahl’s films, she reaches for a sports metaphor: other directors show off with little breaking balls, she says, but Riefenstahl throws a fastball straight into the viewer’s chest. That is the quality she admires, the unembarrassed directness of the appeal, the refusal of half-measures. In books and interviews, she speaks of Riefenstahl less as Hitler’s decorator than as a model of ruthless artistic will and of what a woman can force out of a hostile industry.

Here the political irony bites. Ishioka is moved by Riefenstahl’s Nuba images, by the beauty of those elongated bodies and scarified skins, and helps reintroduce them to Japan. Not long after, she lends her talent to the Běijīng Olympics, producing another kind of disciplined spectacle for a regime that, in the same years, is shielding the Sudanese government whose genocidal violence falls on peoples like the Nuba. The circle is not exact, but the echo is hard to ignore: one woman elevates a threatened African culture into icons of physical grace; later she helps choreograph the public face of a power that protects its persecutors. The beauty on the stadium floor does not mention any of this. It does not have to. Its task is to dazzle.

The appeal remains clear. Ishioka sees in Riefenstahl proof that a woman can seize the camera and dictate how bodies and space will look. In the macho environment she knew, that is almost intoxicating. Her implicit bargain is simple: “I will take the will, the discipline, the formal grammar, and hold the politics at arm’s length.” The self-flattery lies in believing that such a clean extraction is possible. Even when critics like Sontag revive the argument that any celebration of Riefenstahl is a form of collaboration, Ishioka recounts it as if it were a misunderstanding: audiences want clever, ironic “breaking balls,” while Riefenstahl simply throws what she believes in. The problem, in her telling, is the viewer’s taste, not the object of admiration.

I am very close to Ishioka here. The same charge runs through me when I look at Riefenstahl’s and Ishioka’s work. What grips me is not any love for the regime but the sense of someone bending the medium to her will. It would be easy to tell myself that I care only about this grammar and can carry it away, purified. The hesitation comes from knowing how often “pure beauty” has been invoked to hide what lies underneath. After the twentieth century, and after the recent carnival of anti-Semitic spectacle dressed up as justice, I no longer trust that phrase.

There is another, quieter brutality in Ishioka’s story. Riefenstahl never stops marking her work as hers. Ishioka’s authorship often dissolves. Directors, studios, and campaigns lift her inventions and present them as inevitable, as if they appeared by themselves. My earlier pleasure, as a viewer, was in spotting “Eiko traces” everywhere. Under Sade’s question—who gains when her name disappears—the picture shifts. Beauty still does its work, selling films and brands and prestige, while the woman whose eye created it is treated as a replaceable technician.

Among her many achievements, one work points in a different direction and will eventually bring us closer to Arbus. The Fall sits in a different light from her more openly spectacular projects. Co-created with her future husband Nicholas “Nico” Soultanakis and Tarsem Singh, in a position that gave her a reach beyond costume into the whole fabric of the film, it tells a small story about a suicidal stuntman in a 1920s hospital and a little girl who refuses to leave his side. He keeps her there with an extravagant fantasy tale; she answers by believing him enough to tie him back to life. When it was remastered in 4K and shown in Tōkyō in November of 2025, after nearly 20 years of relative obscurity, younger viewers received it not as a glorification of power but as a baroque relay for meaning, wrapped in beauty, in a world that offers very little of either. If Triumph of the Will stages beauty as an accomplice to harm, The Fall shows the same appetite for image harnessed to keep nihilism at bay a little longer. I will come back to that shift when I turn to Arbus and to a third kind of beauty.

Arbus: beauty of resonance

Diane Arbus (1923–1971) stands at the far edge of this field. If Riefenstahl shows the beauty of bodies drilled to serve power, and Ishioka spends her life testing the power of beauty, Arbus belongs to another line again. I think of it as a beauty of resonance. It is the small, stubborn echo that passes between two exposed beings who recognize themselves in each other’s unease and stay in the room.

Her photographs draw me with a different kind of force. They are breathtaking, yet they do not console. They are also not cold. The people in them are “freaks” in the old vocabulary, visibly different—wrong for the stadium, wrong for the ideal. The feeling I have in front of them is not curiosity about deformity and not admiration of defiance. It is closer to com-passion in the original sense: feeling with. A shared fever, a shared wound, a shared effort to stay standing in a world that has already judged.

The beauty in these images does not lie in smoothing anything over. Faces remain awkward, bodies remain strange, the rooms are often shabby. Nothing is softened. What matters is the way Arbus stands with them. She enters their space and lets the same hard light fall on all of them, herself included. There is no balcony, no safe distance. The gaze is level. Her subjects look into the camera, and, by extension, at us, without apology and without any gesture of “take me in.” The picture holds the moment where two discomforts meet and neither retreats. That is the shape of resonance I mean.

Before I stay longer in these rooms, I want to mark a small constellation of lives and fictions that sit closer to Arbus’s side of the field than to Riefenstahl’s: Stefan Zweig, C. S. Lewis, Salinger’s Esmé, and, on another register, The Fall.

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942), a Viennese Jew steeped in European high culture, watches the rise of the regime Riefenstahl served. His chosen beauties are books, music, private decency. As that world collapses, he goes into exile and finally kills himself in Brazil. His last letters carry a flat, drained grief. He does not turn disaster into a “tragic sublime” or frame his suicide as a meaningful gesture. He lets beauty fail. In a field where Riefenstahl fuses beauty to political power and turns it into a narcotic, Zweig stands for a very different relation: beauty that is powerless against the state, and a writer who refuses to convert that powerlessness into a consoling myth.

In 1939, C. S. Lewis tells nervous students at Oxford that “favourable conditions never come.” People have always tried to think and create while the world burned somewhere: war, plague, invasion. If one waited for safety, there would be no thinking at all. There is a kind of quiet beauty in that stance, the image of a small circle of minds continuing their work while bombers cross the sky. At the same time, Lewis is careful not to treat this as heroism. He does not aestheticize war or baptize it as a purifying ordeal. He is describing a discipline rather than staging a spectacle. Where Riefenstahl offers beauty as an amplifier of power, Lewis presents a modest intellectual constancy that neither glorifies power nor pretends to stand outside it. His position is simple: carry on, without turning endurance into theater.

J. D. Salinger’s For Esmé—with Love and Squalor (1950) works at a much smaller scale. A damaged soldier, a cheap room, the letter of a child who barely knows him, and a slight loosening of the knot in his mind. The beauty here sits in a minimal gesture of care, almost nothing in outward form. The pleasure is modest, the relief of not being entirely alone. There is no claim to redemption, no stadium, no myth, only a tiny increase of meaning in one life. The Fall, which Ishioka helped shape far beyond the wardrobe, does something similar on a different scale: a man who wants to die keeps living just long enough to finish a story for a girl who believes him. Beauty here is neither stadium nor freak-show. It is a relay for meaning against the pull of nothingness.

All four mark a different weather from Riefenstahl’s stadium. Here beauty neither intoxicates crowds nor redeems history. It gives one mind just enough resonance with another to keep going a little longer, or, in Zweig’s case, to show that even when that resonance fails it need not be dressed up as glory. This is the climate in which I place Arbus.

Sontag, in On Photography (1977), chose to see Arbus as a connoisseur of freakishness, a voyeur feeding on the damaged. It is worth remembering that Arbus was another woman she did not like. There is a narrow truth in her accusation: someone is always looking, and the one who holds the camera has more freedom than the one who holds still. Yet the verdict misses the temperature of the work. The passion in these photographs is not the sadism of the spectator. It is the fire and hurt that pass between sitter and photographer and settle into the frame. Pain is there, but it is not isolated as a specimen. It is recognized. Arbus does not decorate it, does not redeem it, does not hide it. She stays in the room with it.

If I bring Sade’s question here and ask who is enjoying what, and what has to be ignored to keep that enjoyment intact, the answer shifts. My pleasure in Arbus is not the pleasure of looking at the other from safety. It is the jolt of recognizing that the line between “freak” and “normal” is thin, and that the unease in their eyes is also mine. There is still a risk of self-flattery, the comfort of believing myself to be on their side, against the stadium. I do not want to pretend that risk is not there. Even so, I cannot read these pictures as mere exploitation. The photographer has put herself into the same harsh light. The images feel less like trophies than records of a fragile communion.

In the larger pattern of this essay, Arbus anchors another corner. Riefenstahl’s beauty is the beauty of submission to an ideal that belongs to someone else. Ishioka’s beauty is the beauty a woman tries to wrest back into her own hands, only to see it often stripped of her name. Arbus’s beauty is the beauty of resonance: two human beings standing in a bare room with no alibi, no myth of health or nation to hide behind, and enduring the look together. Whatever power there is in these images comes from that com-passion, not from the humiliation of the person seen. In that sense she belongs to the same small family as Salinger’s Esmé and The Fall, where a man and a child keep each other alive a little longer through words and images. Beauty appears there, as in Arbus’s rooms, as a relay passed between exposed beings so that neither has to face the void entirely alone.

Where I stand, without alibi

What remains is the question of why any of this matters: what, if anything, such fragile resonances and refusals have to do with beauty, and, beneath that, what kinds of meaning with which a person can still bear to live.

My pleasures are not pure. I enjoy Riefenstahl’s images at the level of eye and nerves. I relish Ishioka’s transformations, the way she drags that grammar into new myths and surfaces. Arbus’s faces draw me with the sense of standing in the room with them. The perverse elegance of Hannibal’s crime scenes attracts me, along with my own discomfort in that attraction. I also take pleasure in seeing through the excuses of Sontag’s milieu and the French theorists, and through the current radical chic that turns anti-Semitic excitement into moral theater. I enjoy the feeling of holding all this in view without collapsing.

I protect these pleasures with useful stories: that I am only analyzing, that my distance from every tribe keeps me honest, that knowing how seduction works makes me less seducible. I calculate that tracing the mechanisms gives me a margin of freedom, while admitting that it does not cancel the appetite.

Since Riefenstahl built her fame on glorifying the man who ordered the camps, it seems right that at least one voice here should come from someone who saw them from inside. Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) stands at an angle to all this. What Salinger sketches in miniature—a cracked mind held together a little longer by a child’s letter—Frankl tries to name as a law. In the camps he concludes that a person’s main concern is not simply to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but to find meaning, and that life is not primarily a quest for pleasure or for power, but a quest for meaning. People will sometimes endure suffering not because it becomes acceptable, still less beautiful, but because they can still fasten it to a task, a promise, a responsibility, or to someone they refuse to abandon.

Here “beauty” has nothing to do with the camp itself. It clings instead to small, stubborn traces of value that refuse to die: a remembered line, a scrap of music hummed under the breath, the decision not to let every sense of worth be extinguished. That is a kind of beauty of resonance, a faint echo between an inner image and a possible future self, enough to keep someone from dropping into nothing. It does not redeem the horror. It keeps one human thread from snapping.

Somewhere between Esmé and The Fall there is also that tiny stop-motion film Lost & Found (2018): a crocheted dinosaur unravelling itself to drag a knitted fox out of danger, thread by thread, until nothing of its own body is left but a heap of yarn. Then comes the frantic, clumsy work by the fox of knitting it back together. The film withholds the easy consolation of a restored creature. The attempts fail, again and again, and we watch the fox go on knitting, stubbornly. Even if the fox were to succeed, what reappears would be necessarily imperfect: crooked, scarred, nothing like the original toy. That outcome is not the point. The beauty here does not lie in restoring an ideal form, but in the decision to come apart for the other and in the imperfect labor of trying to remake something that can exist again. That is the same beauty of resonance I feel in Esmé’s letter, in The Fall’s dying stuntman and stubborn child, in Arbus’s rooms, and in Frankl’s “will to meaning.” It has nothing to do with the beauty of power or the power of beauty as spectacle; it is simply a refusal to abandon the other to nothingness.

Riefenstahl and, often, Ishioka find beauty in purification: mess pressed into pattern, conflict dissolved into form. The stadium, the reef, the Běijīng ceremony, the crimson silhouettes in Dracula all offer the same reassurance. Whatever chaos lies behind them has been tamed into a single rhythm in which the eye can rest. The figures gathered around Arbus, Esmé, Frankl, and Lost & Found live in the opposite condition. Their beauty stands inside an unsolved mess and refuses to pretend it is anything else. That is the terrain where I place the beauty of resonance.

Jacques Zylberberg (1939–2010) gives that messy terrain another name: complexity. For him, complexity is not a knot to be cut through or disentangled, but an au-delà, a horizon that always recedes, held, when we are lucky, by a fragile triangle he called sagesse, lucidité, liberté: a kind of wisdom that still holds after horror has stripped away illusions, lucidity as the refusal of comforting lies, and freedom in the small, stubborn acts that still defy circumstance. In that light, the beauty of resonance is simply what appears when someone stands facing that horizon without editing it into purity: Arbus in a cramped room; Frankl trying not to let the inner eye go blind in the camp; the fox knitting on; the rare spectator who does not let the pattern drown out the scream. Set against that, my own position is narrower. This essay lives mostly in lucidity. It reaches, where it can, toward wisdom. As for freedom, it does very little. I know that, and I go on writing anyway, because I am not willing to give up the pleasures this position protects.

From Sade’s vantage, I am simply another person whose tastes and conscience cross in an untidy way and who would rather not examine the crossing for long. I am not outside the field I am describing. If this essay has a protagonist, she is neither Juliette nor Justine, but a woman sitting in the blue light of a screen, trying to make sense of the “unravelled” threads of these three lives.

I see myself now as the fox in Lost & Found, fumbling with the yarn of Riefenstahl’s symmetry, Ishioka’s vibrant armor, and Arbus’s exposed faces. I am knitting them into this text, not to restore them to some original, “pure” beauty, but to see if they can hold together a different kind of meaning. It is a clumsy, imperfect labor. The result is crooked, scarred by the history of the twentieth century and the complicities of the twenty-first.

I keep the Sadean scalpel on the desk because I need to remember the price of the patterns I admire. I am the spectator who has opened her own Pandora’s box and refused to close it. I go on knitting these sentences in the dark, well aware that the most impolite question is the one I must keep asking until the thread runs out: Who is enjoying what? What am I refusing to see in order to keep this beauty intact?

My own name belongs in that inventory along with everyone else’s.

Why does HMTC educate about the Holocaust?

Education about the Holocaust deals with the worldwide systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.

When we delve into the Holocaust, it is extremely important to discuss the dangers of prejudice, discrimination, anti-Semitism and dehumanization. The Holocaust also reveals the full range of human responses—raising important considerations about societal and individual motivations and pressures that lead people to act as they do—or to not act at all. 

Holocaust education is essential for the following reasons:

• Preservation of memory: It honors the victims and ensures their stories are not forgotten.
• Understanding history and encourage students to think critically: It provides context for the events leading to the Holocaust, their impact on society, the ability to analyze propaganda, and recognize the dangers of hatred and intolerance.
• Combatting anti-Semitism: Education helps to challenge and reduce prejudice against Jewish communities.
• Promoting tolerance and inspiring action: It fosters empathy and respect among different cultures and religions, and empowers individuals to stand against anti-Semitism, injustice, and advocate for human rights.

HMTC’s mission is to:

Demonstrates the dangers of prejudice, racism, hatred, scapegoating, discrimination, dehumanization, and extreme anti-Semitism.

Demonstrates how a government can turn against a segment of society. This emphasizes the need for all, especially those in leadership positions, to reinforce humanistic values that protect and preserve free and just societies.
 

Highlights that there are no simple answers to complex problems. To understand how extremist ideologies and propaganda targeted hate and insight fear, peer pressure, indifference, greed, and resentment. 

Explore the actions of perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders, upstanders, and victims. This can develop an awareness not only of how hate and violence take hold but also of the power of resistance, resilience and solidarity in local, national, and global contexts.

At HMTC we believe in a just and tolerant world and work to achieve this through our all of educational programs. Visit us at hmtcli.org.

I am a Holocaust survivor and a child of Holocaust survivors, born December 21, 1939, in the city of Czernowitz, Bukovina; then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now in Romania.

My parents and I were deported when I was only a-year-and-a-half-old and I have no memories of that period of time.My parents wanted their children to have a normal childhood and did not talk of our experiences. They did not want to burden us with those stories. For me, it’s a blessing in disguise. Because I don’t have to relive those whole stories like the older generations do every single day.

If you ask any survivor, “How come you’re alive today?” everybody will use one word: luck. There is no rhyme and no reason why somebody lived and somebody died—I survived.

I was never separated from my parents, but I was subjected to medical experiments. You will look at me and you will never know that I’m in constant pain. I have been, I am, and will be in pain every single second of my life.

From 1941 to 1944, my parents and I were in a labor camp and ghetto called Mogilyev-Podolskiy in what is now Ukraine, an area that was annexed by the Romanian Nazis who were the most brutal group of people. Very few people know about the Romanians’ brutality: for instance, they brought together 19,000 Jews from Odessa and burnt them alive. So very few people know about the cruelty of the Romanians. The camp was liberated by the Red Army in March of 1944, and my family and I made our way to a small town in Transylvania called Reghin and eventually emigrated to Israel in 1961 where I served as a mechanic in the Israeli Air Force.

One main reason I am alive today, my father once explained to me, is because a German woman saved my life. Not far away from the labor camp, there was a farm owned by Germans. She brought food to the guards in the SS, but when she saw the physical signs that I’m dying of starvation—big head, whole stomach, sore feet—at the risk of her entire family, she decided to give me milk, possibly more, but I did not ask my father more details. I don’t know the name of the person that saved my life, let alone why, but, in 2014, I went to Israel giving testimony at Yad Vashem and told her story.

I had a recurring nightmare that lasted for many years. In the nightmare, I was in the corner of a building. I was naked. The only lights and sounds I saw and heard were from the explosions outside. It made me feel like I was in a void and alone. But, today, because I tell my story, I know that is just a dream.

A few months ago, I was invited to speak at MS 447, a Queens public school. Then I learned that the principal denied me this invitation to speak to the kids. I don’t know her and the principal never talked to me, but, apparently, they have Muslim kids there, and they come to school with the kufiyeh and the principal claimed the PowerPoint presentation on my website was her reason for disinviting me. My PowerPoint presentation does not discuss the war in Gaza or Iran, but there is an Israeli flag in the background. I’m an Israeli. Why would I deny my heritage? So, for her, that was too political, but there was a big outcry, and the media was involved, and the superintendent overruled the principal, and I was allowed to speak there on February 5, 2026. The pushback was very important because somebody else will try to deny me or others the right to speak, and now they can use New York as an example of how to overcome that.

The Jewish people have a future everywhere, with one condition—and this is my mission in life—to educate the next generation; to motivate them to be the best they can be and empower them to become upstanders. All the tragedies in the world—genocides, the Holocaust—happened because most stood by and did nothing. And I want to teach them how the Holocaust happened. I go through the stages—that people did not react in time and it kept escalating. Knowledge without action means absolutely nothing, and they have to take the example of Martin Luther King, Jr., to march nationwide, to bring other ethnic groups with them, and to do it in a peaceful way, without violence. And because of the way Dr. King did it, bringing the media with him, many groundbreaking pieces of legislation have been passed. We must be united and fight for everybody.

When I talk about October 7, I was not surprised by the attack, because I had been saying for years, “Why did Israel expect different results using the same old tactics?” However, a lot of people compare it to the Holocaust because it was the worst atrocity inflicted on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. If you have to make comparisons, compare the Hamas brutality with ISIS, but not with the Holocaust. We have to be very careful with the words that we are using, as people use words too loosely, all kinds of words, and then those words become the norm; then we have to change the norm and we must speak with one voice. 

The Holocaust must be taught forever and ever. It is the best example of what hate can do to a person, a group of people, to a nation, to the world. The whole world was involved in trying to annihilate only one group of people, the Jews. Some Jews are offended when they see the Holocaust universalized, because, many people say, the Holocaust isn’t just the story of the murder of the Jews, but it’s the story of the killing of “everybody.” I say, “Please don’t compare it anything, because the Holocaust is a unique moment in history.”

Our enemies use one-word accusations­—“genocide,” “apartheid,” “colonialist”—and everybody hears it. We don’t have one word to which everybody can listen, as everybody usus a different word, and so our message is confusing. Therefore, nobody hears us and the media do not know what we’re standing for. Joseph Goebbels explained “the big lie,” and how the bigger the lie the more credible it becomes, and that’s exactly what our enemies are doing.

My mission is to educate the next generation. We have to educate the young people to be upstanders and not to be afraid to talk. Each child should have a very strong voice and each one can make a difference.

I have spoken with Holocaust deniers; for instance, a Pakistani woman who repeated that the IDF is committing genocide. She looked at me and said, “You are part of the problem.” That’s indoctrination. That’s why I start with first, second, and third graders. I talk about hate and bullying, and I start to speak with fourth graders about the Holocaust before they’re indoctrinated. BDS started on campuses, succeeded, then went to high school and succeeded. They are right now in middle schools. And, once the children are indoctrinated, it’s almost impossible to bring them to critical thinking.

I’ve spoken to between 350,000 and 400,000 people in my life; and, from the responses that I get, I know that they will make a difference, but it will take time as true change doesn’t happen suddenly. People will have to be educated, and eventually things will change, but it will get worse before it gets better.

I was also honored to light the torch as an Israeli for the rebirth of Israel one year for Independence Day. That was, so far, the highlight of my life.

I am an optimist, and I will die an optimist. We survived the Holocaust. We survived many other tragedies, and, when I talk to high school students, I remind them of Passover. In the Passover hagadah, there is the sentence that, in every generation, our enemies try to annihilate us, but, instead, their civilizations disappeared. We prevailed and will continue to, and I have a very strong message: we are here to stay, whether you like it or not.

Am Yisrael chai.

The work of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County (HMTC) exists at the intersection of memory, moral responsibility, and democratic preservation. In an era increasingly defined by ideological extremism, algorithmic propaganda, and the normalization of hatred disguised as activism, the mission of Holocaust education has become not merely relevant, but indispensable.

Over the past year, HMTC has: held educational initiatives; public condemnations of anti-Semitism via words spoken at rallies and/or written words in press statements; interfaith programming; law enforcement partnerships and education; aiding and unveiling the bipartisan buffer zones SACRED (Safeguarding Access to Congregations and Religious Establishments from Disruption) Act; brought forward speakers from artists who refuse to remain silent such as Five for Fighting’s John Ondrasik and peace activists such as Moroccan Muslim Youseff El-Zahari, IDF lone soldiers Sam Fried and Ira Kohler (author of the newly released Once a Paratrooper), leading members of ZAKA including those who were on the ground on 10/7 collecting and identifying the bodies of innocent Israeli civilians massacred in their homes, shelters, and at the NOVA music festival; organized and moderated movie screenings with panel discussions and book releases that others may find too risky to bring to public attention; moderating eye opening conversations in our Humanity Matters podcast studio with activists such as Rawan Osman and Abraham Hamra, IDF lone soldiers, American veterans, historians, elected officials, and more; hosted tens of thousands of public, Catholic, Jewish, and private school students to tour our updated exhibits and hear survivor testimony; interviewed and recorded testimonies which have been nominated and presented at the Emmys year after year; and hosted community events and opportunities for people to come together and be inspired to take action—together—in a world that at times can feel hopeless. 

The combination of these events has collectively demonstrated an institution refusing complacency in the face of rising hate. This organization has emerged not only as a guardian of historical memory, but as an active civic force confronting the modern machinery of radicalization. 

The Holocaust is not a distant abstraction confined to black-and-white photographs or aging textbooks. It is the most meticulously documented example of what occurs when propaganda supplants truth, when democratic institutions erode under ideological pressure, and when ordinary citizens become conditioned to view moral silence as virtue. HMTC recognizes that the Holocaust cannot be taught solely as a chronology of atrocities; it must be taught as a warning. Its educational philosophy consistently emphasizes that genocide did not begin with gas chambers. It began with rhetoric. It began with social isolation, the legitimization of conspiracy theories, the normalization of public hatred, and the strategic dehumanization of an entire people. 

That lesson possesses extraordinary urgency today. 

Across universities, social media platforms, public demonstrations, and even K–12 school environments, there has been a disturbing resurgence of anti-Semitic rhetoric disguised as political sophistication or moral activism. Increasingly, individuals are pressured into believing that defending Jewish safety, acknowledging anti-Semitism, or standing against extremist hatred, somehow places them “on the wrong side of history.” This phenomenon bears a chilling resemblance to the atmosphere that developed throughout Europe during the rise of Adolf Hitler. In the 1930s, countless citizens were manipulated into believing that public solidarity with Jews represented opposition to progress, nationalism, or social stability. Through relentless propaganda, Jews were transformed into scapegoats for societal frustration, economic hardship, and political unrest. Fear of social ostracization silenced many who privately recognized the danger. This not only appears in the rise of Hitler but sadly goes back thousands of years and generation after generation, where it is simply simpler to blame a minority, in some cases for otherwise inexplicable events such as the Black Death (when people did not understand a bacterium pandemic and that the reason for lower numbers of Jews falling ill, was simply due to religious rituals such as hand washing). 

The parallels are impossible to ignore. 

Modern propaganda no longer relies solely upon state-controlled newspapers or radio broadcasts. It spreads instantaneously through viral videos, manipulated imagery, anonymous online networks, and emotionally charged misinformation campaigns designed to bypass rational analysis and provoke outrage. Young people, particularly those consuming information primarily through social media algorithms, are increasingly vulnerable to ideological indoctrination masquerading as justice-oriented discourse. The story has remained the same; only the cover has changed. Today, that cover often takes the form of false accusations against Israel, denying a single nation’s right to exist, and singling out Jews with suspicions of divided loyalty. 

HMTC’s educational and advocacy programs are therefore profoundly consequential because they equip individuals not merely with historical knowledge but with intellectual discernment. We teach students, educators, law enforcement officials, and community leaders how to identify propaganda, challenge dehumanization, and recognize the early warning signs of extremism.

Equally important is HMTC’s insistence upon preserving survivor testimony while survivors are still able to speak firsthand and supporting following generations (“2Gs” and “3Gs”) to carry it on. Survivor testimony represents one of the last remaining barriers against historical distortion and denial. Statistics alone cannot convey the psychological terror of exclusion, the trauma of displacement, or the consequences of societal indifference. A survivor standing before a classroom transforms history from abstraction into human reality. The testimony becomes irrefutable not simply because it is factual, but because it is personal. It forces listeners to confront the moral choices individuals and societies make during moments of crisis. When Holocaust survivors share with students that for the first time since the Holocaust—that they are scared for their and their families’ safety—it forces students and adults to pause, to take in the education we shared with them. 

Yet the passage of time presents an urgent challenge. As the survivor generation diminishes, HMTC carries an even greater responsibility: ensuring that testimony does not disappear into archival obscurity. Our role is not passive preservation. It is active transmission. We must continue translating historical memory into contemporary civic education that resonates with younger generations facing radically different technological and political realities. 

Our organization’s success is because of the collaborative efforts of dedicated staff, volunteer docents, board members, young leadership, Holocaust survivors and their descendants (2Gs, 3Gs, 4Gs), educators, and our many supporters and partners. 

What distinguishes HMTC’s work is its refusal to isolate anti-Semitism from the broader struggle for democratic resilience. HMTC consistently frames hatred not merely as a threat to Jews but as a threat to civil society itself. 

History demonstrates that anti-Semitism rarely exists independently; rather, it functions as an early indicator of democratic decay. Movements built upon anti-Semitic conspiracy theories frequently expand to target journalists, educators, immigrants, religious minorities, LGBTQ individuals, and political dissenters (at times, that includes many who participate in the initial Jew-hatred).

The ultimate objective of extremist radicalization is not solely hatred toward a specific group. It is destabilization—the erosion of trust in democratic institutions and in the fragmentation of social cohesion, as well as the weakening of family relationships and the replacement of pluralism with extremist ideology. 

This is why Holocaust education matters far beyond the Jewish community.

When HMTC educates students about the Holocaust, it is simultaneously educating future citizens about the fragility of democracy, the dangers of political extremism, and the ethical obligations of civic participation. When we publicly condemn acts of Jew-hate or hate symbolism, we reinforce societal boundaries that prevent normalization. When we collaborate with schools, police departments, interfaith leaders, and elected officials, we strengthen the communal infrastructure necessary to resist radicalization before violence escalates. 

Silence has never protected democracies. Avoidance has never neutralized extremism.

The instinct to retreat from uncomfortable conversations is precisely what allows hatred to metastasize beneath the surface of public life. HMTC’s relevance today stems from its willingness to confront these realities directly, even when doing so is controversial or politically inconvenient. 

Our center’s work ultimately affirms a profound truth: remembrance alone is insufficient without moral courage. To honor Holocaust victims requires more than memorialization. It requires vigilance against contemporary forms of hatred, resistance to propaganda regardless of its political packaging, and the willingness to defend democratic principles even when social pressure discourages doing so. In this sense, HMTC is not simply preserving history. It is safeguarding the ethical foundation upon which a free society depends.

Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column on alleged Israeli sexual violence against Palestinians appeared on May 11. The following day, the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children released Silenced No More, a 297-page report on sexual violence committed during the Hamas-led attacks of October 7 and against hostages in captivity. Yet public discussion quickly centered on Kristof’s column and the controversy around its most grotesque allegation, rather than on the Commission’s report.

That imbalance is consequential because the two texts do not belong to the same evidentiary order. Kristof’s column rests on 14 conversations (12 of them anonymous to the reader), partial corroboration, activist intermediaries, and the authority of the Times. The Civil Commission report represents two years of work, more than 430 testimonies and interviews, more than 10,000 photographs and video segments, and over 1,800 hours of visual analysis. Kristof’s column does not merely lack the evidentiary architecture of the Commission report; it shows how prestige media can turn a politicized sourcing chain into a public grandstand, where accusation performs as evidence before scrutiny can begin.

The timing also sharpened a lexical inversion. Kristof’s column appeared under the title “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.” The following day, the Civil Commission released Silenced No More. Before the report could publicly define silence as the erasure of Israeli victims, Kristof had already turned the same moral keyword in the opposite direction. The effect was not merely rhetorical. It helped prepare the conditions in which the report would be received: as the Israeli counterpart to an accusation already placed before the public, rather than as a major evidentiary record demanding examination in its own right.

The title of the Commission’s report is therefore not incidental. Silenced No More announces an effort to restore the voices of victims whose suffering had been doubted, minimized, or treated as politically inconvenient. Kristof’s column, whatever its intention, helped reverse that work. By placing its own accusation before the report entered public discussion, it made the victims of October 7 easier to silence again through false equivalence.

The Civil Commission is an independent Israeli civil-society initiative that gathered, organized, and assessed evidence concerning sexual violence committed during the October 7 attacks and against hostages. Its report is not an op-ed, a polemical brief, or a newspaper investigation. It is structured as an evidentiary archive, with attention to testimony, visual material, forensic context, geolocation, source hierarchy, and cross-referencing.

Most readers will not open nearly 300 pages of documentation. They will absorb the easier pattern: Kristof alleges sexual violence against Palestinians; the Civil Commission documents sexual violence against Israelis; both sides accuse each other; both are political; both can be dismissed into the fog of mutual claim-making.

The danger lies there. A serious evidentiary report can be made unreadable before it is refuted. It need not be defeated by counter-evidence. It can be neutralized by the terms in which it is received.

Kristof cited Ehud Olmert, who said he believed such abuses happened and that war crimes were being committed in the territories. But Olmert did not corroborate the specific claims in the column, still less its most lurid allegation. Placement did the work that evidence had not done: it made a general statement by a former Israeli prime minister appear to authorize a set of particular accusations. Around the Civil Commission report, the same problem appears at scale. A serious document is not answered. It is absorbed into a symmetry created elsewhere.

The issue is methodological: how evidence was gathered, classified, cross-referenced, archived, and made available for scrutiny. What follows is a study of two architectures of credibility.

I. The Civil Commission’s Architecture of Evidence

The Civil Commission’s report makes grave claims. It concludes that sexual and gender-based violence was “systematic, widespread, and integral” to the October 7 attacks and their aftermath. It argues that such violence occurred across multiple locations and phases of the assault, including abduction, transfer, and captivity. It further claims that recurring tactics of sexual abuse and torture formed part of a broader operational method.

Those conclusions are attached to an evidentiary structure. The report states that its investigation reviewed more than 10,000 photographs and video segments, amounting to more than 1,800 cumulative hours of visual analysis. It also says the Commission conducted more than 430 formal and informal interviews, testimonies, and meetings with survivors, witnesses, returned hostages, experts, and family members.

The methodology is not merely quantitative. It includes site visits to attack locations such as Kibbutz Be’eri, Nir Oz, the Nova festival site, and Route 232; visits to the Abu Kabir National Forensic Center; forensic pathologist assessments; and review of body conditions. Its visual and digital materials include Hamas body-camera footage, surveillance footage, live text and audio recordings, and geolocation verification.

The report also describes the structure of its archive. Materials are logged, coded, mapped across time and geographic locations, and integrated into a database on sexual and gender-based crimes. It refers to a formal open-source investigation program drawing on news articles, documentaries, parliamentary hearings, official documents, social media, and geolocation databases.

The report declares a hierarchy of evidence. Its source structure gives primacy to perpetrators’ own video and body-camera footage, followed by survivor and witness testimony, then verified media and investigative reports. The Commission states that its factual determinations are cross-referenced across multiple independent sources and that no finding rests on a single source.

The reader need not accept every legal conclusion. The essential point is that the report gives the reader, the critic, the court, and the historian something to examine. Its claims are attached to an archive, a method, a hierarchy, and a declared process of cross-reference.

This is why the lazy response that the report is “Israeli propaganda” is insufficient. The report emerged from a wounded society. Of course it did. Its credibility depends on whether its claims are attached to testimony, images, chronology, forensic context, legal reasoning, and a method that can be tested.

No perspective removes the obligation to corroborate accusation with evidence.

II. Kristof’s Architecture of Accusation

Placed beside that structure, Kristof’s column is a different kind of text. It is not a report, archive, or legal submission. It is an opinion column written with the authority of a famous reporter and published by the most influential newspaper in the United States.

Kristof says his reporting is based on conversations with 14 men and women who said they had been sexually assaulted by Israeli settlers or members of the security forces. He explains that he found these alleged victims by asking lawyers, human rights groups, aid workers, and Palestinians themselves. In many cases, he says, it was not possible to corroborate the victims’ stories in full. Partial corroboration came through family members, lawyers, social workers, or others in whom they had confided. In other cases, he says, corroboration was not possible at all.

Those accounts warrant investigation. They do not justify the status Kristof gives them, still less the sweeping indictment he builds from them. Fourteen conversations, many anonymous or only partially identifiable to the reader, do not amount to the same evidentiary structure as a two-year project built from hundreds of testimonies, extensive visual analysis, site visits, forensic consultation, geolocation verification, archival indexing, and a declared source hierarchy.

The contrast is not only one of scale. Kristof cites no publicly examinable physical or forensic evidence capable of sustaining the column’s central accusation, much less its most grotesque allegation.

He cites no visual or digital evidence comparable to perpetrator footage, surveillance footage, geolocation-supported material, or structured visual analysis. He does not describe a formal evidentiary hierarchy. He does not clearly distinguish among first-hand testimony, activist reports, second-hand confidences, organizational claims, legal advocacy, and inference.

Nor are his institutional sources equivalent in evidentiary function. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, B’Tselem, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Save the Children are different kinds of organizations, with different mandates, methods, and political positions. Their appearance under separate names does not automatically create independent verification.

Advocacy alone is not the issue. Some of these sources belong to an information ecology in which accusations against Israel travel easily, while Hamas’s violence and coercion are treated evasively or not at all. Euro-Med, in particular, should not be treated as a neutral evidentiary channel, and Kristof’s mild description of it as an advocacy group “often critical of Israel” does not tell readers enough about the source he is asking them to trust. A detailed critique by Gerald M. Steinberg, president of the database NGO Monitor, in Quillette has traced Euro-Med’s role in Kristof’s column, its April 2026 report, and the earlier circulation of the “dog-rape” allegation. Institutional variety is not the same as independent verification. In Kristof’s column, corroboration often appears cumulative rather than structurally independent, with organizations already moving in the same accusatory direction made to resemble separate evidentiary checks.

Kristof’s column does more than report allegations. It turns under-corroborated claims into a public indictment, then lets the obscenity of the accusation conceal the evidentiary void beneath it. It turns those accounts into a claim of widespread Israeli sexual violence across institutions. Such a movement requires a stronger foundation than the column provides.

The dog-rape allegation is the clearest test. Kristof gives the reader an accusation of exceptional grotesqueness, then leaves it without the support such a claim demands. Its evidentiary status is never made proportionate to its symbolic force. A detail capable of transforming the accusatory force of the entire column is offered with no physical evidence, no forensic evidence, no visual evidence, no named witness available to the reader, and no clear independent corroboration. Nor does Kristof give readers enough information to test the allegation themselves: no documents, no dates precise enough for verification, no identifiable investigative record, no chain of custody, no forensic report, no source hierarchy.

The more extreme the allegation, the more disciplined the verification must be. In Kristof’s column, extremity is allowed to do work that evidence has not done.

Allegations of sexual violence can and should be reported when the evidentiary basis is clear. An allegation of this extremity, presented without publicly examinable corroboration, enters a different symbolic register. It begins to function less as evidence than as sexual rumor shielded by moralistic posture.

The dog allegation is central because it is not simply an under-corroborated claim. It belongs to a recognizable genre: sexual atrocity rumor attached to Jews, circulated before evidence can be tested and carried forward by righteous display.

Edgar Morin’s study of the Orléans rumor showed how sexual accusation can circulate as communal knowledge even without verifiable evidence, especially when it condenses fear, disgust, and moral panic into a single story. In 1969, Jewish shopkeepers in the French region of Orléans were baselessly accused of kidnapping women in fitting rooms and trafficking them into sexual slavery. No missing woman was ever found.

The history of anti-Semitic violence gives this failure a particular weight. Pogroms have often begun not with official decrees but with hearsay granted the status of moral knowledge: rumors about violated women, kidnapped children, hidden bodies, poisoned wells, ritual blood, and sexual corruption.

Such accusations do not need evidence to begin their work. They need circulation, credulity, and a public prepared to experience suspicion as virtue. Hearsay about sexual violation is never harmless in the history of anti-Semitism. Kristof’s dog allegation belongs to a history in which lurid sexual rumor does political work before verification can catch up.

Kristof cannot show that extraordinary scrutiny took place because the column provides no publicly examinable basis for it. The allegation is not evidence in any meaningful public sense. It is not anchored in documents, forensic material, identifiable records, named witnesses, or independently testable corroboration. Its function in the column is atmospheric: it supplies obscenity and turns rumor, in Morin’s sense, into a posture of moral authority. Through that movement, Israel is made to appear violent, obscene, and sexually monstrous before evidence has been made available for examination.

III. How False Equivalence Makes Evidence Unreadable

Sexual violence is too grave to be handled as tribal evidence. Any credible allegation deserves investigation, whoever the accused and whoever the victim. Consistency requires more than distributing suspicion evenly. It requires applying evidentiary standards evenly.

Equal scrutiny does not flatten the two texts. It reveals their difference.

Kristof’s column obscures that difference. Palestinian accusation is allowed to acquire evidentiary force through anonymity, partial corroboration, activist mediation, and the authority of the Times. Israeli evidence, by contrast, is received as already compromised by politics, even when it comes attached to an archive, a method, and a declared process of cross-reference.

False equivalence does not give both sides the same burden. It lowers the burden for accusation against Israel, then raises the burden for evidence produced on behalf of Israeli victims. Serious documentation is made to look like one more partisan claim, while a column built from accusation is allowed to behave like proof.

The necessary questions are basic. Who gathered the evidence? How was it preserved? What is direct testimony? What is inference? What has been cross-referenced? What is publicly available? What remains sealed? What is stated as fact, what is stated as probability, and what is being smuggled into the reader’s imagination through rhetoric?

These questions do not obstruct moral inquiry. They belong to it.

IV. Why the Difference Matters

Most readers will not parse these distinctions without help. They will not compare methodology sections, archive descriptions, source categories, evidentiary thresholds, U.N. references, legal conclusions, or source hierarchies. Instead, they will receive a cruder message: Kristof says Israelis sexually abuse Palestinians; the Civil Commission says Hamas sexually abused Israelis. Each side has victims, reports, and politics. Therefore, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

The truth is not found halfway between a documented atrocity and an under-corroborated accusation. To call that middle ground “balance” is to abandon judgment while pretending to exercise it. Evidentiary credibility is the relevant measure here. One text gives the reader a method, an archive, and a trail of corroboration. The other asks anonymous accusation, partial corroboration, and tabloid obscenity to carry a national indictment. Treating them as equivalent reduces a serious investigation to one more partisan exhibit.

A related inversion now operates around the Commission report. In Kristof’s column, under-corroborated accusation is elevated into evidence-like authority; around the Commission report, substantiated testimony is reduced to partisan hearsay. Rumor rises, evidence sinks, and the public is invited to mistake the result for balance.

This is why the Commission report’s near-invisibility is not a side issue. The report does not merely add “the Israeli side” to a controversy. It was built to resist erasure, denial, and the reduction of documented sexual atrocity to partisan claim-making. Yet the frame Kristof helped install makes such a document easier to ignore. The more serious and demanding the report is, the less likely most readers are to enter it. It becomes, in the public imagination, one more exhibit in the fog of mutual accusation rather than evidence to be examined.

The Civil Commission report also makes strong claims about patterns, systems, and legal responsibility, and those claims should not remain abstract. It identifies 13 recurring patterns of sexual and gender-based violence, including rape, sexual torture, mutilation, deliberate shootings to the genital area, forced nudity, restraint, public display, digital dissemination, threats of forced marriage, sexual violence against boys and men, and kinocidal sexual violence, in which family bonds themselves were weaponized as instruments of terror. These claims may be debated at the level of legal classification and interpretation, but they are presented as findings arising from a documented corpus.

Kristof’s column moves differently. It collects accounts, attaches them to a language of system and policy, and ends by conscripting October 7 into its own accusation. Its final paragraph says: “The horrific abuse inflicted on Israeli women on Oct. 7 now happens to Palestinians day after day.”

The structure of that sentence matters. First, Kristof invokes October 7. Second, he invokes sexual violence against Israeli women, a subject with a documented evidentiary history, including survivor testimony, witness accounts, perpetrator footage, forensic debate, U.N. inquiries, and now a major Civil Commission archive. Third, he transfers the moral and evidentiary gravity of that history onto allegations for which his column does not provide a comparable evidentiary architecture. Israeli suffering becomes a credential for an under-corroborated indictment.

Whether or not this was intended, the effect is clear. Kristof’s column has helped make the Civil Commission’s rigorous report less visible, less readable, and easier to dismiss. It has placed an archive built for scrutiny inside a fog of reciprocal accusation, where evidence is made to look like counter-accusation and rigor is reduced to politics.

The answer to Kristof’s defenders should be clear: yes, scrutinize the Civil Commission report. But do not pretend that the evidence of sexual violence on October 7 has lived in some protected chamber of automatic belief. It has been questioned, parsed, challenged, minimized, and attacked almost from the first day after the massacre. The Civil Commission report enters a field already saturated with doubt, denial, U.N. inquiries, forensic debate, survivor testimony, perpetrator footage, and hostile interrogation.

Its answer is method: it preserves materials, identifies sources, describes its archive, states its categories, and makes its evidentiary structure available for examination. Those who call for equal scrutiny should accept that invitation rather than use “scrutiny” as a polite word for dismissal.

Kristof’s column deserves the same seriousness. Why were 14 conversations, many concealed from the reader, and drawn through a heavily politicized information ecology, allowed to support a sweeping claim about widespread Israeli sexual violence? Why were claims that could be corroborated only in part, and others that could not be corroborated at all, arranged into a national indictment? Why was aggregate corroboration from organizations moving in the same accusatory direction allowed to stand in for independent verification of individual accounts? Why was the most grotesque claim in the column published without publicly examinable extraordinary verification? Why was an opinion column allowed to behave like an evidentiary report while avoiding the disciplines such a report must bear?

If this is not named, serious evidence will keep losing to spectacle before it has even been read. The Civil Commission report is built to withstand rigorous examination. Kristof’s column asks accusation to masquerade as evidence. Under the cover of compassion, it performs the work of cancellation.

The dead and the raped are owed more than a freak show of accusation, more than the double erasure of what was done to them. They are owed the cold discipline of evidence.

Every Tuesday night in Manhattan, a circle of chairs was arranged to hold a universe of intersecting worlds. Around the table sat a remarkably diverse group: four older adults born into the thick of the Second World War, and ten New York City high school students hailing from a kaleidoscope of backgrounds; Black, BIPOC, Latino, German, Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, and non-Jewish.

On our very first evening together, the air was dense with the palpable hesitation that always accompanies an encounter with profound historical trauma. Many participants were visibly wary of the immense emotional and temporal commitment required for a project of this magnitude. Breaking through this tentative atmosphere was Robert Nussbaum. Robert, the eldest of our older adults and a survivor from Budapest, Hungary, possessed an innate charisma that quickly established him as the “social glue” of our ensemble. With an abrupt, refreshing lack of political correctness, he looked across the circle at the teenagers and asked: “Well, I’d like to know, why are you here?”

What followed was a uniquely sincere, fascinating conversation that set the tone for the next eight months. Some students spoke of deep family roots that have gone through the Holocaust. Others, who were not Jewish at all, explained with striking vulnerability that they simply wanted to understand the intimate history of another people. Yet, the hesitation did not vanish instantly. 

Cordula Hahn, whose parents had fled Czechoslovakia for the Netherlands immediately following Kristallnacht, and who was herself born into the complicated life of a toddler during the war, looked at the group and admitted: “I am really not quite sure I want to be here. I don’t know if I want to live the Holocaust every day.” And yet, Cordula kept coming back. 

I recognized that this was the first major victory of the process. Something within our evolving therapeutic and communal framework was already powerful enough to hold all the ambiguity, resistance, and doubt of its members, slowly weaving a safety net capable of catching every participant.

Inherited Legacies + Sacred Script

After years of grappling with my identities as an Israeli-Jewish drama therapist living in the U.S., and a third-generation descendant of the Holocaust, I found myself joining Witness Theater, an extraordinary intergenerational drama therapy program that brings together Holocaust survivors and high school youth to sit in community, learn, and transform personal survival testimonies into a shared public performance of collective remembrance. As a professional theater director and drama therapist, this was an unavoidable convergence of my personal, theatrical, and clinical worlds.

My maternal grandfather, Zeev Shwartz (later Zeev Shehory) was born in Budapest, Hungary. He was persecuted as a young child, witnessing the systematic tearing apart of his community. Many of his siblings and extended family members were murdered by Hitler’s regime. Like many others he endured the terrifying reality written by the Nazis and ultimately ended up in Auschwitz, where his identity was reduced to a number etched permanently into his skin. He survived the ghettos and camps by raw luck and enduring grueling forced labor, peeling oranges for Nazi officers. He stayed alive by nourishing his growing body with the thin string of bitter pith and peel left behind. 

This desperate hunger and the haunting weight of survival did not vanish with liberation; they became an invisible inheritance. My grandfather passed away when my mother was only seven years old, meaning I never had the chance to meet him or hear his voice. Yet, like so many other surviving Jewish families, we learned that trauma does not require a physical presence to travel across generations.

The Power of Language + Intergenerational Bridges

From our very first session, we made a deliberate choice to refer to our older participants as “adults” rather than survivors. While “survivor” honors incredible endurance, it can inadvertently flatten a person’s identity; calling them adults honored the rich, multifaceted lives they built after 1945, ensuring they were recognized as whole people rather than solely by the catastrophes of their childhoods. This year, our core group consisted of four remarkable individuals: Cordula Hahn, Robert Nussbaum, Eugene Ginter, and Lisa Holzkenner. During the war, they were all young children between the ages of two and seven—a haunting reality that constantly resurfaced in our discussions and ultimately became the leading narrative of our play.

Meeting them across a seventy-year age gap were ten brave high school students. This vast chronological divide was quietly compressed into nothingness through weekly interactions. Rather than looking up to the adults as static historical monuments, the students formed genuine, fluid relationships marked by mutual honor, spontaneous laughter, and deep identification. Driven by a youth population that proved boundlessly inquisitive and emotionally sensitive, this profound coming together of generations transformed historical distance into a deeply shared experience.

Trauma-Informed Frameworks + Aesthetic Distance

Operating under a trauma-informed lens, it was clear that throwing these two distinct populations into a room together without scaffolded preparation would be irresponsible. Before the joint sessions could safely commence, specialized workshops were held for the high school students alone, establishing a container for what was to come.

First, the teenagers covered the necessary parameters of Holocaust history, anchoring themselves in the structural context required to hold the testimonies they were about to receive. From there, the preparation deepened into an intensive workshop on the nature of psychological trauma. The students learned how trauma physically manifests in a room. How it can show up as a sudden silence, hyperarousal, emotional flooding, or a quiet somatic collapsing. Together, actionable strategies were mapped out: how to recognize when an adult was becoming overwhelmed, how to offer grounded, steady support, and critically, how the students could protect and honor their own psychological boundaries. 

Safeguarding the students’ mental health was just as important as honoring the adults, especially as they took on the heavy mantle of staging these complex testimonies. We utilized the drama therapy principle of aesthetic distance to maintain a healthy boundary between the student’s reality (“Me”) and their dramatic persona (“Not-Me”). Through intentional role-induction and de-roling rituals, we kept them in a therapeutic balance, allowing them to step deeply into history without becoming emotionally flooded.

From Story Sharing to Embodied Staging

Our eight-month journey was divided into distinct, sequential phases. The initial phase focused entirely on group building to establish a profound sense of safety. Once this container was secure, we moved into a ten-week story-sharing phase. Each week, the adults unfolded a different “chapter” of their lives, tracing their lineages from pre-war family history through the depths of the Holocaust and into their modern lives in New York.

In these sessions, students were explicitly cast in the active role of interviewers rather than passive consumers of trauma. By asking intuitive and purely curious questions, they co-created the space, while the rest of the circle practiced active listening. For some of these multicultural students, this project was their very first encounter with the historical reality of the Holocaust, and for the adults, an intense feeling of community and shared experiences was formed. Many wept, hugged, and continued endless conversations about the atrocities our adults endured as young children.

At the conclusion of each verbal session, we moved onto our feet, utilizing drama therapy interventions like embodiment, psychodrama, and dramatic sculpting to stage a chosen scene from that day’s testimony. Crucially, the adults held directorial agency, while I quietly provided the therapeutic scaffolding to ensure everyone remained grounded and emotionally secure. They cast the students to play figures from their memories, directed the physical staging, and chose whether to physically participate or observe from an aesthetic distance.

From a trauma-informed perspective, this is profoundly empowering. Trauma strips an individual of control, rendering them a helpless object to external cruelty. By stepping into the role of director, the adult retrieves the power to navigate and mold their own narrative, physically changing the internal script of their trauma. Two specific vignettes illustrate this clinical transformation.

The first centers on Eugene Ginter, who was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau and tattooed as a mere four-year-old. Though he and his father managed to miraculously stay alongside each other during their time at the camp, they were torn apart during the chaos of the death march near liberation, leaving five-year-old Eugene to survive the front lines alone. Reunited with his mother at age six, they traveled through active minefields until they finally found his father working on a post-war farm. Eugene recalled that the war didn’t truly end for him until that morning when he crawled into bed and snuggled between both parents in absolute safety.

Recognizing a lifelong longing, I suggested we relive that moment through staging. Eugene took the directorial lead, casting a German student as his mother and another student as his father. Sitting in the center of the room, Eugene closed his eyes as the high school students replicated the somatic gestures he softly described: his father slightly squeezing his arm, and his mother gently rubbing his back. There, in the heart of Manhattan, 90-year-old Eugene felt the physical echo of protection from the parents he had not seen since they passed away.

Our second vignette involves Lisa Holzkenner, a psychoanalyst born into a respected, mystical Kabbalistic family in Morocco, whose father was a boxing champion and underground smuggler of Jewish youth. Despite spending decades clinically treating Holocaust survivors, the tailored safety of our drama therapy circle allowed Lisa to share an experience she had never told anyone before.

She recounted that as an eight-year-old girl, she was surrounded, beaten, and called a “dirty Jew” by neighborhood children. Beyond the physical trauma, the experience left her in a state of profound existential confusion, unable to square the violence with her grandfather’s spiritual teaching: “Do not hate, we are all the same blood.”

To process this buried memory, Lisa needed to watch it from an aesthetic distance. She directed the students to replay the scene, gradually adding historical and imaginary characters to rewrite the logic-less scenario she had internalized. Watching her redirect this memory was deeply therapeutic for the entire ensemble. The students witnessed healing in the making—a physical transition from tearful constriction to clear, dignified breathing and absolute narrative ownership.

Ultimately, this physical embodiment allowed the Adults to safely access and unlock memories that had been locked away, while casting the high school students allowed the youth to participate in a restorative act of deep empathy and compassion.

The Rehearsal Lab: Expanding the Role Repertoire

Once the story-sharing phase concluded, it was my responsibility to cultivate and weave these four distinct testimonies into a cohesive, original theater script. My objective as a playwright was to keep their historical truths completely intact, using dramatic structure and theatrical staging not just to educate, but to let these four specific, intimate lives echo the vast, collective magnitude of the Holocaust. 

The rehearsal period shifted our group dynamic from a fluid therapeutic circle into a highly focused, rigorous “work mode” that ultimately spanned over 150 hours. Yet, within this demanding process, the rehearsals became an active learning laboratory where students wrestled with complex historical storylines. They frequently asked intuitive questions, like why they needed to scream in a scene when the historical moment was silent; I explained that they were giving a theatrical voice to a child who, in 1943, could not afford to make a sound.

This intense artistic process allowed these teenagers, who were actively building their own real-life identities, to explore Robert Landy’s “role repertoire”—the diverse parts of the self we play in life. Within this shared, creative learning environment, they expanded their internal vocabulary of roles by stepping into the shoes of caregivers, historical oppressors, victims, and heroes. Meanwhile, the Adults retained full agency to “correct” our work, sharpening historical details and collaborating with me to rewrite scenes, ensuring they molded exactly how they wanted their lives portrayed on stage.

The Fifth Witness: Performing the Tapestry

Culminating the eight-month journey, The Fifth Witness brought the entire group, teens and adults, together on stage before packed audiences spotlighting directorial and therapeutic choices such as having the Adults physically on stage throughout the entire performance to symbolize absolute ownership of their stories. 

At carefully crafted moments, they stepped directly into the action to swap places with the students portraying their younger selves. In these moments, the student actors transitioned into “Doubles,” a psycho-dramatic concept where actors offer support that did not exist during the original experience, beautifully bridging biography and restorative performance. This theatrical world was further enriched by an original score composed by Lisa Holzkenner’s granddaughter, a continuous visual projection of family photographs, and historical vocal recordings of the Adults from their youth.

The audience too was not left behind and was given an active role in the performance, as in therapeutic theater, the audience is never a passive consumer; they were explicitly called upon to step into the sacred position of a collective witnessing body, providing the communal validation that historical trauma demands. The atmosphere was unapologetically intense, holding up the unvarnished horrors of the Holocaust while weaving in moments of playfulness and childhood humor. This creative duality sparked a profound transformation for both generations on stage. The adults found a liberating, restorative experience and the comforting certainty that their legacies were secure, while the high school students gained an internalized, lifelong sense of empathy and global responsibility.

What happened on that stage proves that to keep memory alive, education must move from the purely cognitive to the somatic and the relational. This is the precise promise of drama therapy in schools. By replacing passive, detached learning with active, trauma-informed exploration, we ensure that younger generations do not just view history as a static monument to the past. They deeply understand it, carry it with them, and become active partners in keeping the memory alive.

Witness Theater was conceived by Irit and Ezra Dagan and developed by JDC-Eshel in Israel. It was brought to New York in 2012 by Selfhelp Community Services, Inc. This year’s Witness Theater Program is a collaboration of Selfhelp, UJA-Federation of New York, and Yeshivah of Flatbush’s Joel Braverman High School. The program also receives generous support from Carol and Carl Hess, the Miriam and Arthur Diamond Charitable Trust, and the Kupferberg Foundation, with assistance from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, supported by the German Federal Ministry of Finance.

What is an heirloom that your family treasures? Perhaps a seder plate, letters from war, a baseball glove, or even a tattered handwritten recipe. My family’s possession of my father’s detailed experience during World War II sat for over four decades before changing the course of my own story. That is my heirloom.

My father, Melvin Goldman, was a Holocaust survivor from Łódź, Poland. He did not talk about what he and his family had experienced and I did not know the depth of their suffering. My guess is he wanted to protect me from what he had lived through and witnessed. Growing up, I did not anticipate becoming an author, but an heirloom sitting in my mother’s closet eventually set me on a course to doing so, 20 years after my father’s passing.

Melvin’s Story

Melvin had the vision to preserve his life story onto 10 cassette tapes in the late 1970s. He bought a tape recorder and began giving his testimony in his office. It is an extraordinary story shrouded by the sounds of daily life. In the background, you can hear the phone and doorbell ringing. After a few brief pauses, Melvin proceeded once again to talk about his life. I’m not sure if it was cathartic for him, but he must have felt the importance of his story and I believe he intended to write a book at a future time. He never encouraged me to listen to what he recorded.

In 2015, my son Jason was accepted to study for a semester in Berlin. My family decided we would travel through Poland and trace some of my father’s steps. Jason encouraged me to listen to the tapes before we took our trip. I purchased a tape recorder and about 10 seconds into listening, I began to cry. I had not heard my father’s voice in almost 20 years. I soon realized that I had not only the preservation of his voice, but a detailed story of his life, and the lives of my family who were lost in the Holocaust. On one of the tapes, my father requested that someone put his story into a book. I had to honor his wishes.

My father was born Mieczysław Goldman on January 21, 1923, in Łódź, Poland. He was the oldest of seven children born to Chaim and Bajla Maria Goldman. My family had been in Poland for over 400 years. My grandfather owned a sheet metal factory and he forged custom ornamental products.

The Goldmans lived a typical Jewish life in Łódź. They attended the Stara Synagogue, kept kosher, attended school and work, vacationed in the summer, and participated in lots of activities in the city. There was anti-Semitism in Łódź and my father experienced it at school and on the soccer field. He heard racial slurs and he was beaten up on occasion, but it was accepted because there were 30 million Polish people and 1.5 million Jews.

Rumors began flying that Germany would take over Poland; though any believed this would not happen. Far from the truth. On September 1, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland. It was a swift and powerful takeover. They marched and drove in causing chaos and sheer terror. Part of Łódź was made into a ghetto. The city was occupied and used for its manufacturing and industry. The Goldmans were within the boundaries of the ghetto and they were able to remain in their house only after the Nazis looted and stole most of the contents.

Conditions worsened as time went on. No school, no medicine, and barely enough food to survive. Against his will, my father made hand warmers and belt buckles for the Nazis. My grandfather was a supervisor in a factory, and my grandmother made straw forms to fit over German soldiers’ boots to prevent frostbite. This continued for five long years until it was announced that the Łódź ghetto would be liquidated.

The Goldmans were ordered to take a few of their belongings and head to Radegast Station. Packed in a closed boxcar with little food or water, they slowly made their way to Auschwitz. They were greeted by Dr. Mengele, many guards, and aggressive dogs.

Mieczysław and his brother were sent one way and the rest of the family the other way. That was the last time Mieczyslaw ever saw his family again. He was separated from his brother because they were related. Mieczysław said that if you thought the ghetto was bad, think again. Auschwitz was horrendous. Beatings, killings, torture, and more slave labor. He suffered through dysentery.

At the Jewish holidays, there were extra beatings. Mieczysław had six teeth knocked out. He realized that if he didin’t have a plan, he would not get out of Auschwitz alive. He begged a guard to put him on a transport to another camp and this began a series of death marches and difficult train rides to other camps for yet more slave labor.

The last stop for Mieczysław was a subcamp of Neuengamme. The Germans knew the Allies were close and they began running off. The 82nd Airborne Division came through and found what was left of the prisoners lying in a field. Mieczysław was one of them. He was immediately taken by ambulance to be treated for a collapsed lung and active tuberculosis. My father was a skeleton who weighed fewer than 85 pounds.

Mieczysław spent time recuperating in numerous hospitals. He also had to prove he could be a responsible citizen who could care for himself and manage independently. This consisted of training so he could find a job. He focused on metal work. Over five years later, Mieczysław chose to relocate to the United States where he felt he would be accepted. He looked back at the kindness of the soldiers, doctors, and nurses who liberated and cared for him and he felt grateful. On December 31, 1951, Melvin came to Pittsburgh to start his new life. He began working and learning English. He rented a room for himself and met Mildred, who lived in the same house. My parents married in March of 1954. Melvin received citizenship in 1956 in what he called one of the best days of his life.

After holding many jobs, my father’s next goal was to fulfill a dream he had: starting his own business. My parents opened up a jewelry store in the early 1960s. Melvin took classes through the Gemological Institute of America and he became a talented, creative, well-respected jeweler. My father crafted many pieces for customers for over 25 years and I think he did this custom work so he could bring joy to people. My father, nearing retirement, ultimately decided to close the business in 1988. He had health issues from after the war that stayed with him for the rest of his life. Every doctor he saw told him all of his illnesses were related to what he experienced during the war. The compensation for which he fought and finally received was a mere pittance in comparison to his pain, suffering, and medical bills. But, receiving this small pension after so many years was a win for Melvin.

My father lived long enough to see me marry John Kikel. It was a good fit for all of us. And then, the best thing that could happen was having my son, Jason. This was a blessing for my father who had lost almost everyone in his life at a very early age. Jason was a breath of fresh air for Melvin. And, once he realized this new baby would not break, they began to spend a great deal of time together. It was amazing seeing my father on the floor playing with his grandson. It brought so much joy to him and also hope that the world could be a better place. My father passed away in 1996 on one of his favorite holidays, Sukkot. I felt sad that Jason was only four-years-old when his grandfather died. He doesn’t have many memories of him, but I can say that Melvin would certainly be proud of what Jason has accomplished and what he is doing with his life.

Back to 2015. My husband, son, and I traveled to Poland, where I immediately began journaling. The Goldman house and factory were gone and a lovely park sits on the property. We found the apartment building where a young woman hid books in the ghetto for neighbors who wanted to read. My father would sneak out after curfew to borrow some of her books. His mother was terrified he might be caught but I believe he read these books to educate himself and to escape what was happening in his world.

We took a small group tour to Auschwitz. I displaced myself so I could take the tour. My emotions were running wild. I worried about my husband and my son. The sadness can overtake you. It overtook me. I lost so much of my family at this death camp. The grandparents I never got to meet and all of the aunts, uncles, and cousins of whom my father spoke. The traditions we could have had. The celebrations and little things such as Shabbat dinners, shared conversations, and interactions with family members who were lost. This trip to Łódź brought me closer than ever to my father, but it also left me with many questions about anti-Semitism, hate, war, and my family.

Becoming an Author

My intention over 10 years ago was to begin giving presentations about my father’s remarkable life. I stalled. I was not comfortable speaking to any kind of audience and I could not gather my thoughts. My circumstances changed dramatically in 2015, after realizing I would be writing a book.

Perseverance: One Holocaust Survivor’s Journey from Poland to America came out in 2019. That was four years after I began writing. The first part of my book is all in my father’s words, so it is his memoir. Part two of my book includes my memories of growing up and adding what my father did after retirement. Part three is a large appendix which chronicles my father’s journey in various camps and hospitals, and also includes photos, maps, postcards from friends he made after the war who moved on with their lives, and lots of documentation.

Since my book came out, I have spoken to a variety of audiences to tell my father’s story. Over the years, these have included universities, libraries, historical societies, church groups, schools, and book clubs; even the Folsom Prison book club. Over 50 Inmates read my book and we had a Q&A discussion about Melvin’s life. Many of the participants told me how much they appreciated Melvin’s tenacity and hope. For those eligible for parole, they will be able to submit reflections on character, ethics, and perseverance based on what they learned.

I’ve enjoyed being able to engage with higher education, making appearances on a handful of campuses for keynotes and a variety of lectures with students and the public. As a result of these experiences, my son and I are currently developing a non-profit foundation to bring multi-disciplinary Holocaust and genocide education to the next generation.

I became a generations speaker for the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh a few years ago which opened more doors to presenting at more schools. I have taught lifelong learning classes and my book is being used in the curriculum at a few universities.

In 2021, a Pittsburgh-based theater company adapted my book into a play, Perseverance, which had its premiere in 2023 and just debuted in Canada this spring. Perseverance is a creative way to tell the story of my father and my family. The audience was able to connect with the characters and feel a level of tangibility. The initial performance was recorded and has been used as a global classroom with students on multiple continents coming together virtually to discuss their thoughts and feelings about the Holocaust and other genocides.

A cyber charter school in Pennsylvania produces a series of short documentary films called Moments in History. After giving a presentation to the school’s students, I was invited to participate in the film series and share my father’s story. The short film had its debut on International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, 2024. This emotional, impactful film later won an Emmy Award from the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Over the years, some of my audiences have brought up similar questions and comments. Many recurring thoughts are about my father’s faith and ability to survive torture and loss, my thoughts on anti-Semitism and the world today, and inquiries about Holocaust denial.

Audiences of all ages, demographics, and backgrounds have arrived at these questions, teaching me that others are curious about my father’s own resilience while concerned about inherited trauma and combating hatred going forward. I answer that my grandparents instilled many wonderful qualities in my father; that helped him carry on in the worst of times and also inspired him to have hope and perseverance. My father never lost his faith. He was a quietly religious man with good values and morals. Anti-Semitism goes back thousands of years, and it began long before World War II. I tell my family’s story and I encourage listeners to seek out other survivors’ stories.

The realization that the Holocaust affected my family so deeply has increased my awareness about anti-Semitism, hate, and genocide. The older I get, the more I feel the need to talk about what happened. I feel scared at times. Some of the rhetoric is hard to imagine, and it incites people to behave in terrifying and disappointing ways.

Final Thoughts

As I give more presentations, I feel an increased weight on my shoulders to tell my family’s story, which is important so we keep past history in the forefront. It is difficult for many to understand or relate to events that happened over 80 years ago, so I encourage others to look at what is happening in the world today. Bigotry, hatred, and genocide are found around the world and identifying them does not require extensive effort.

There has been a dramatic increase in anti-Semitism. A surge in incidents came after the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. This spike is not temporary. It has been noted by the ADL that, in 2024, there were over 9,000 incidents which was up 5% from 2023. That is a 344% increase over the past five years. Anti-Semitic assaults are on the rise which include attacks on individuals as well as synagogues. We see trends which show a rise of anti-Semitism worldwide.

There is violent rhetoric on social media which makes Jews feel less safe. It is just another way of spreading hate and falsehoods. This does not stop with just Jews. It continues to impact other communities and we all need to use our voices to address what is happening. 

We can find positive ways to work with one another by listening, learning, sharing beliefs, being more open-minded, and becoming more productive. Be an upstander. Speak up when you see or hear something unkind. From what I have seen in my many presentations, panel discussions, and programs I have attended, I have hope for a better future.

I will continue to tell my family’s story for as long as I can. I am going to share other people’s stories as well. Jewish people say we die twice: the first time is when our hearts stop beating, the second time is when our name is spoken for the last time.

My father said he hoped the world will wake up. It is important for me to keep the Goldmans’ memories alive by telling their stories. Human beings were targeted because they were Jews, deemed undesirable, or did not fit into the strict social hierarchy of the time. It is imperative to keep their humanity and memory in mind.

The Holocaust has come full circle. Given its common meaning—the mass murder of six million Jews—that’s not something to celebrate. It’s always best to put as much distance as possible between an atrocity and more normalized surroundings. New generations should view the Holocaust as ancient history, and not as a current event.

I am in no way suggesting a repeat performance, a long-awaited sequel, a genocidal do-over. Yet, the killing, marginalization, and harassment of Jews worldwide has never been greater than it has been these last several years—except for when the Holocaust itself was in progress. Statistics don’t lie: wherever one looks, anti-Semitism is on a steep rise, going viral, and becoming increasingly violent. There is no longer anything virtual or secretly aspirational about it.

It’s not so much that harming Jews—wherever they might be found—seems to be on the minds of many. It’s that it’s on the lips of a not insignificant number of anti-Semites who would like nothing more than to have another go at the Final Solution. 

A congressional candidate in Texas recently proposed placing American Zionists in concentration camps where they would be castrated because, it goes without saying, most Zionists are pedophiles. Of course, most American Jews are Zionists. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for uncastrated American Jews. 

We’re not quite yet at the Auschwitz stage of American history, but if street life is any indicator, the immediate future for Jews doesn’t look promising. Anti-Semites are proudly filming themselves in the act of threatening Jews—creating evidence of hate crimes and leaving them red-handed. They are seen shouting slurs. Demanding that Jews all return to Israel. When Islamists are caught on video making such threats, their landing destination for Jews is Poland. Doctors and nurses, mostly Muslims, openly declaring on social media they have no intention treating Jews—just killing them!

Here’s an ambition you didn’t expect to hear again: Making good on bringing the Holocaust back from the dead. What’s most alarming is that such murderous talk is no longer a risky bet. It’s fairly consequence free. And it doesn’t require a whispering campaign or a secret handshake. Islamist cells are no longer asleep. They are fully functioning in broad daylight. The plotting of Jew-hatred has gone acoustic, proudly proclaimed without fear or favor. 

Where is all that rage-filled fury coming from? How did it go from dormancy to operational readiness so quickly? And why is it being so openly manifested without any societal backlash?

It is true that the entire concept of “behind closed doors” no longer exists; it’s become obliterated by the prying gaze of social media. Nothing is worth doing if it isn’t being posted for friends and followers—even if it involves threatening to harm people. But aren’t there still some things best left unsaid?

There’s no reticence about how one is presented on social media. All inhibitions somehow disappear. There’s a casual acceptance of depravity—on display for all the world to see. Many end up losing their jobs when Human Resource Departments discover evidence of an employee’s not-so-secret private life. It’s only a job loss. It can’t possibly compare with the morally justified obsession with dead Jews. 

Just look at the social media rantings of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife. She glorifies terrorists and downplays the sexual violence committed against Israeli teenagers on October 7, 2023. The mayor shrugged off the First Lady’s un-deleted revelations of her heart of anti-Semitic darkness. She’s a private citizen, the mayor reminded us. She has every right to make her private thoughts public. Yet shouldn’t he be worried about his political future?  Obviously, he has been made to believe that he won’t pay a price. And he’s probably right. 

But the sheer shamelessness of it all. Today’s anti-Semites don’t hide behind euphemistic language—the brilliant brainchild of the Nazis that made their war against the Jews appear innocuous.

“The Final Solution to the Jewish Question” didn’t quite conjure the otherworldly image of exterminating Jews—from the planet. “Delousing” didn’t sound like gassing. “Resettlement” did not prefigure concentration camps. “Ramp duty” was especially vague. How would anyone know it meant dividing Jews into two lines: one that resulted in a shaved head, branded arm, and months of miserable toil until succumbing to a certain death; and the other—reserved for children and frail adults—a fast track to the gas chambers and crematoria.

No beating around the barbed-wire for today’s Nazi idol-worshippers. You have to give them credit for their directness—a frankness about aims that would have startled Adolf Hitler himself.

Signs carried during marches in the major capitals of Europe, Australia, and Canada literally read: “Kill the Jews.” They freely chant: “Jewish scum: Go back to the gas chambers.” In London, cars circle Hyde Park as loudspeakers repeat: “Rape Jewish daughters!” Islamists march to this bit of ghoulish Arabic malfeasance, “Khaibar, Khaibar, ya Yahud, jaysh Muhammad sa ya‘ud!” Translation: “Khaibar, Khaibar, o Jews, the army of Muhammad will return!” Khaibar refers to a seventh‑century Arabian oasis where the first generation of Muslims massacred Jewish tribes.  

Never once has Islam shown itself to be a “religion of peace.”

No other people romanticize the past quite like Islamists. The mere mention of the Umayyad Caliphate makes certain Muslims go mental—even though it’s a throwback to the eighth century. No wonder so many Muslim-majority countries are stymied by a lack of civilizational progress. Their minds are preoccupied with the more recent Islamist expansions into the Western World, which requires traveling back in time to 1517.

This partly explains why Israel’s success story—in the middle of the Middle East; the backyard where the vast majority of Muslims live—is so galling and thwarts all talk of peaceful coexistence. 

So, instead, perchance to dream of Jewish genocide—but to do so fully awake. Chanting “From the River to the Sea” is no longer a euphemistic mystery. College students and pink-haired progressives may still not know precisely which river and what sea the lyric is referring to—or what continent we are even talking about—but they are pretty sure that it’s an unambiguous clarion call to kill Jews with moral justification. 

The Islamist who murdered the two young embassy workers outside the Jewish Museum in Washinton, D.C., a year ago did not run from the crime scene. He waited to be apprehended and then calmly confessed, “Free Palestine,” as if such phrasing, in a world where criminal accountability is in freefall, was tantamount to a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card. The same was true of the Boulder, Colorado, flame-thrower. He, too, saw no reason to flee, especially without first announcing the virtuous nature of his deed. 

“Free Palestine” is casually invoked as if congratulations are in order, an anticipatory triumph of the kill. 

Thoughts of another Holocaust registers no shock value. A bitter irony because for the first 25 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the word didn’t yet exist—largely because no one wanted to discuss it. Survivors were trying to rebuild their lives and not recall their near deaths. And those who wished to tell their stories were told that such graphic material was an unsuitable downer amid all the post-war euphoria. 

Many survivors didn’t even discuss it with their own children. (My parents fell into this category.) Any recollections of such incalculable loss was too traumatic. And what kind of a fresh start could the children of survivors expect to enjoy if tragic tales of the extinguished European pasts of their parents were carried around with them to Little League baseball games and stopovers at Dairy Queen?

Books had not yet been written or movies made about the uncensored Holocaust. Anne Frank’s diary (first published in 1947, with the Broadway play premiering in 1955, and the film in 1959), with its universalist message and sanguine sign-off—“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart”—was an especially limited revelation. After all, the book provides no glimpse into all that was taking place outside of that Dutch attic. We learn a lot about the inner life of this precocious Jewish teen living under great distress in a capsizing world. But she didn’t know where she was going to end up, couldn’t comprehend the monstrosities that awaited her.

For the first few decades, it was nearly impossible to get a true sense of what had happened to two-thirds of European Jewry. Even history books were in no rush to reach the shelves, as if processing the enormity of it all would require more time.

Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker (1964) was perhaps the first artistic work to explore the damaged psyche of the survivors. It wasn’t until the TV mini-series Holocaust (1978)—starring a very young Meryl Streep and James Woods—that the word itself entered the popular lexicon and where the event was first introduced to a national audience on network television. 

It wasn’t until the 1990s that the Holocaust, and the testimonies of the survivor community, became more widely known. Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993), which took home seven Oscar wins on 12 nominations, was certainly a catalyst. It even became a set-piece for an episode of Seinfeld. Throughout the decade, the Best Documentary Oscar always seemed to involve a re-telling of the Holocaust.

These artistic endeavors largely trivialized the scale and magnitude of the Holocaust, however. But many believed it was better to provide audiences with something representational—even if tritely presented—otherwise they might know nothing at all. The Holocaust went from the un-mentionable and unimaginable to full-blown technicolor on silver screens. 

The Holocaust Memorial Museum opened in Washington, D.C, to overflowing crowds. Elie Wiesel and Simon Wiesenthal became cultural figures. There was mandatory Holocaust education in public schools. The profits from “Schindler’s List” were set aside to establish the Shoah Foundation, which videotaped the testimonies of Holocaust survivors. What better way to hear the unspeakable than through the recorded voices and pained facial expressions of those who were actually there—stored away for posterity. 

From 1994 through 2000, over 52,000 videotape recordings were produced, all of which now exist at the University of Southern California. Another 4,400 video recordings are housed at Yale University as part of its Fortunoff Video Archive.

During that time period, one would be hard pressed to find themselves at a cocktail party where the Holocaust was not mentioned at all. Having something poignant to say about the Shoah became fashionable. What was once subjected to deafening silence, improbably, became the talk of the town. 

And then, somewhere into the 21st century, suddenly, as if all that tape had been rewound and then erased, no sound at all—just silence, again.

In this era of identity politics, the Holocaust, cruelly, lost its identity. It was perceived as an altogether wrong storyline. Intersectional alliances that pitted white against persons of color, oppressors against the oppressed, free-market capitalists against socially democratic progressives, nudged the Holocaust out of the historical and political discussion. It disappeared from regular discourse. Many viewed the Holocaust as special pleading for the very people who deserved no public sympathy at all.

Jews were seen as white, privileged, and having outsized influence over a wide variety of centers of power: banking, Wall Street, the entertainment industry, and, of course, governmental decision-making—especially when it came to Israel.

Speaking of the Jewish state, despite it being the lone democracy in the Middle East with a diverse population and civil rights and free speech for all, it was accused of perpetrating a panoply of original sins. All the greatest hits in the catalogue of crimes against humanity were found in a state the size of New Jersey: “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” “genocide,” “sexual violence,” “land theft,” “cultural appropriation,” and, of course, “settler colonialism.”

How did the people of Israel find the time to engage in such malignancies while blooming the desert, desalinating the ocean, innovating numerous high- and bio-tech wonders, winning disproportionate numbers of Nobel Prizes, 20 Summer Olympic Medals and four Eurovision Song Contests? Oh, and along the way they fought multiple defensive wars that all ended in Israeli victories.

In Western universities, the Holocaust was taken off the syllabus. And Holocaust education was yanked from public schools. One Oberlin professor opined—seconded by media personality Whoopi Goldberg—that the Holocaust was easily dismissed as “white-on-white crime”—which thus didn’t qualify as a crime at all.

Jews were being told in no uncertain terms to stop playing the Holocaust card. The world no longer wanted to hear about it. Centuries of suffering was now old news—a history that anti-Semites had taken the liberty of re-writing.

Now it is not the Nazis, but Jews who are the perpetrators of genocide. Not South Africa, but Jews are maintaining an apartheid state. Not the Hutus of Rwanda, but Israelis are the instigators of ethnic cleansing. Not the British Empire or the French, Belgian, and Dutch conquerors of Africa, but Israelis who epitomize the evils of settler colonialism. 

Biblical Jews are considered a complete fabrication. We all know that Jews commenced their trespass on Arab land from such far-flung places as Warsaw, Brooklyn, Miami Beach, Skokie, and the Fairfax District of Los Angeles.

The Holocaust could no longer be claimed as a source of sympathy for Jews. It had been bequeathed to the Palestinians. The genocide against the Jews is now being weaponized against Israel on behalf of Palestinians—even though its population has more than tripled since the “Occupation.” More stunningly, it has even increased since the war that Hamas started on October 7, 2023. The outcome was yet another Israeli military victory, but a loss on the front lines of public relations. The word genocide is now widely associated with the one state that owes its very existence to the granddaddy of all genocides. And given Gaza’s population surge, Israel is the most dismally ineffective perpetrator of genocide in human history.

It has gotten so bad that in order to maintain any semblance of social acceptance, Jews are required to publicly denounce Israel. They must also downplay their Judaism lest they wish to stand out as targets. In cities such as London, Brussels, Paris, Stockholm, Barcelona, Melbourne, and Toronto, Jews have hung up their skullcaps and Star of David necklaces. Hasidic Jews have become especially vulnerable in subways and deserted streets. 

For all the power Jews purportedly possess, why is none of it safeguarding the tribe? The Holocaust is not only a forbidden topic; the genocide of the Jews is now a full-fledged taint.

The District Attorney for San Jose, California, Jeff Rosen, was forced to step down from prosecuting a case against Stanford University students who protested the war in Gaza by occupying the university president’s office. The recusal was ostensibly about his conflict of interest in having raised money for his re-election campaign by stating that he was fighting anti-Semitism. But a lingering question remains: how much of the judge’s decision rests on the fact that Rosen is the son of a Bergen-Belson Holocaust survivor?

Is now having a direct, familial connection to the worst crime committed against the Jewish people a disqualification in prosecuting anti-Semitism? Rosen’s capacity for impartially is being questioned. He can’t remain objective if anti-Semitism is being alleged. He can’t be trusted to prosecute pro-Hamas agitators fairly if his father was Holocaust survivor. 

The Stanford students were not charged with a hate crime, however. Rosen indicted them for felony vandalism. Their hatred for Jews would be excludable as evidence. And yet now it seems that Rosen’s family history may cause him to lose his bid for re-election.

The Holocaust, in the original Greek, refers to a burnt sacrifice—fire. Now the word is simply radioactive, a forbidden topic, and a sign of possible prejudice.

The antidote to this newly imposed silence about the Holocaust is testimony. Crack open the archives at USC and Yale. Invite neighbors to your home to watch The Pawnbroker, Au revoir les enfants (1987), and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). 

Amplify the voices of the dwindling number of survivors. And let’s hear from their children and grandchildren. That’s precisely what we have done with this special Holocaust issue of the White Rose. If the stench of the camps found its way into your DNA, then you have the moral authority—the tribal duty—to speak. We also unveil new strategies in restoring Holocaust education.

Do not succumb to this pernicious moral crime of turning the Holocaust against the Jewish people. Transforming Holocaust memory into an armband of dishonor. Demanding an apology from the very people who are forever owed one.

I used to say that I was obsessed with the Holocaust. Kind of a curious thing to say, I know—but as the granddaughter of two Holocaust survivors who never spoke about their experiences, I was desperate to know what they had gone through, to try to make sense of the incomprehensible.

My grandparents, Goldie and Al, had been childhood sweethearts in their hometown of Nove Davidkovo, a small village near Munkács, Czechoslovakia. I knew that Goldie survived Auschwitz, Al survived Hungarian labor camps, and my father, Marty, was born in a DP camp in Germany after the war, but that was about it. I knew I had lost countless relatives—great-grandparents, great-aunts and uncles, cousins—and didn’t know any other third generation survivors (“3G”) outside of my own family. 

I was entirely on my own in my quest to learn, so in typical firstborn-daughter-overachiever fashion I devoured every book, film, and testimony I could get my hands on, and even visited Auschwitz in an attempt to fill the void. I learned so much and felt connected to the stories and the people in them—Anne Frank, Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi—but somehow I felt even less connected to my own.

And yet, even with these gaping holes in my family history, I have always felt my 3G-ness in every fiber of my being—literally and figuratively—even if I didn’t fully understand it. My red hair comes from my great-grandmother Esther, who was sent to the gas chambers when she arrived at Auschwitz. My Hebrew middle name is after my grandmother’s beloved sister, Shaindel, who suffered the same fate. Come to think of it, most of my relatives are named after someone who died at the hands of the Nazis—my father was named for his two grandfathers, my mother was named for her two grandmothers, and so on. I carry the weight of their memory and legacy proudly—not as a burden, but as an anchor, connecting me to the struggles and the triumphs of the generations that came before me. There is a quiet power in that.

But, as descendants of Holocaust survivors know, with that anchor also comes the legacy of trauma—the intergenerational kind that trickles down from survivor to child to grandchild. In my family, this manifested itself in a culture of silence and not talking about the hard things. As a result, I had tremendous anxiety about the unknown, but I learned that certain things just weren’t discussed, and I kept my questions and fears—about many things—bottled up for years.

I am very lucky. My remarkable grandma Goldie is currently 103-years-old, and “still having most of her marbles,” as she likes to say. She is tough as nails and speaks her mind without apology. In her younger years, she was an incredible cook (the best latkes ever!) and a talented seamstress, her snow-white hair was always perfectly coiffed, and she was the life of every party. She has taught me a lot about joy, resilience, and the value of family. In the past few years, I have garnered the courage and taken it upon myself to flip the family narrative and be the first to ask her the hard questions—about her childhood, her family, and her experience during and after the Holocaust. The rewards have been boundless.

I learned that when she arrived at Auschwitz, my grandmother and her sister-in-law were sent to the right, while her mother and young niece and nephew were sent to the left, to death. Her sister-in-law ran after the children, and Goldie followed. Miraculously, someone pushed her back to the right, and she was the only one who survived. She described walking through the snow, with only rags on her feet, sick with typhus, on a death march to the Baltic. She and two other women escaped the march and hid in a barn, ultimately being rescued by a Jewish Russian soldier—another miracle. 

During our talks, I also learned so much more about her—in the way that her face softened when she talked about her mother and beloved sister, the light in her eyes when she described her young romance with my grandfather, and the anguish and tears when she talked about the horrors she endured and the people she lost.

Yes, there are pieces missing, and things I will never know, but I’m ok with that now; I’ve worked hard to become comfortable with the not-knowing. I think that makes me appreciate it even more when I uncover something new, and I find more fulfillment in the little bits. Just the other night, I found a letter, typed in German, that my grandmother gave me a few years ago. Within minutes (thanks, ChatGPT), I discovered that this letter was the affidavit my grandfather had written in the early 1960s as part of his application for reparations from the German government. 

In it, he described the multiple labor camps where he was forced to build airfields and sawmills, and his escape from a death march to Mauthausen with four other men. They hid in the forest, and ultimately were saved by an Austrian family who hid them on their farm until the war ended. A Google search revealed that the family was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 2011. He described the anguish he felt upon learning that his parents and brothers had been murdered at Auschwitz, and the physical and mental struggles he experienced after the war. It was an incredible, unexpected gift—my first-ever glimpse into what my grandfather had endured—in his own voice—11 years after his death. 

In discovering my grandparents’ stories, I have finally found the connection I sought for so long, and in turn, I have found my own voice. While their trauma will always be a part of me, I have the power to decide which shattered fragments to hold onto as they are, and which pieces to reassemble and do better with. What once felt like obsession has turned into passion, and this has given me a renewed sense of purpose. I remain steadfast in my quest to never stop learning and searching for answers, but also fiercely committed to the responsibility to honor my grandparents’ legacy. By telling their stories—in classrooms and community centers—and teaching others what can happen when hate spirals out of control, I serve as a link in the chain of witness, creating new witnesses so that the chain remains unbroken for future generations.

Over the years, many moments have stayed with us, but one in particular stands out.

A middle school student stood in front of the interactive testimony of Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch. He asked her about her life, her family, and her experiences. Then he went quiet and said almost to himself, “She’s like me.”

He didn’t mean their lives were the same. He was recognizing something deeper: connection.

In that moment, the Holocaust was no longer something that happened to “other people, long ago.” Anita was no longer a survivor in a history book. She was a person.

Students today are surrounded by information, yet many still struggle to connect history to real people, human choices, and ultimately themselves. Facts matter deeply. But we began to realize that information alone is often not enough to create lasting understanding.

For more than a decade, we worked alongside educators, researchers, artists, technologists, survivors, psychologists, communities, and, importantly, students, asking a different question:

What if Holocaust education didn’t begin with the Holocaust?

This spring, we launched The Common Circles Experience: New York at the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City.

Created through years of research, collaboration, and community engagement, the two-part interactive exhibition weaves together storytelling, art, photography, student participation, and the USC Shoah Foundation’s Dimensions in Testimony technology to help students engage more deeply with themselves, one another, and ultimately the history and lessons of the Holocaust.

Beginning with Shared Humanity

Part one of The Common Circles Experience begins not with history, but with perception.

Students stand together looking at optical illusions and often see completely different things. One student sees an old woman; another sees a young woman. One sees a vase; another sees two faces.

Almost immediately, the room changes.

Students become curious about what someone else is seeing instead of trying to prove they are right. And then something important happens: they begin recognizing that two people can look at the exact same thing and genuinely experience it differently.

That moment opens the door to larger conversations. How do our experiences shape what we notice, assume, or overlook? What influences the way we see other people? What happens when curiosity replaces immediate judgment?

From there, students encounter portraits and stories from New Yorkers across backgrounds and communities. They begin reflecting not only on how they see others, but on the ways they themselves are often misunderstood, oversimplified, or only partially seen.

And something shifts.

When students recognize complexity within themselves—the parts others may not immediately see or understand—they often become more open to recognizing it in others. We saw this again and again during the development of the exhibit. Students who initially appeared disengaged often became some of the most thoughtful participants once they recognized themselves somewhere within the experience. Curiosity grew. Defensiveness lowered. Conversations deepened.

The process of building the exhibit is itself part of the learning. In many communities, students help photograph teachers and neighbors, conduct interviews, collect stories, and contribute artwork and reflections that become part of the installation.

What surprised us was how deeply this process affected people across the community. Participants often described feeling genuinely seen. Teachers, custodians, security guards, students, and visitors began sharing stories with one another in ways they had not before. The exhibit stopped feeling like something people simply observed and became something they collectively experienced.

From Connection to History

Only after this foundation of connection and reflection is built do students enter the second part of the experience: Voices Against Hate: Lessons from the Holocaust.

There, students engage in lifelike conversations with Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and Jewish American liberator Alan Moskin through USC Shoah Foundation’s Dimensions in Testimony technology.

And because students arrive having already reflected on perspective, belonging, and shared humanity, the encounter often lands differently.

History is no longer abstract. It becomes personal.

In part one of the experience, students spend time exploring the many layers that shape people’s lives and identities within their own communities. By the time they enter Voices Against Hate, many begin approaching Anita in the same way. Yes, she is a Holocaust survivor. But she is also a cellist, a gardener, a mother, a sister, a friend, a neighbor, and so much more.

Students begin to understand her not as a symbol of history, but as a full human being whose life extends far beyond the Holocaust alone.

You can often see the shift happen in the questions students begin asking. Rather than focusing only on dates or historical facts, many become deeply concerned with Anita as a person. They ask whether she had friends in the camps. Whether she misses her parents. What happened to her sisters. How she survived—not only physically, but emotionally.

Sometimes students reach across time trying to connect Anita’s experiences to questions they are already wrestling with in their own lives.

During one visit in White Plains, a student new to the country asked Anita, “What do you think about Venezuela?”

The question was imperfect but deeply human—an attempt to connect history, displacement, and the present.

What emerges in these moments is not sameness, but empathy.

Students are no longer engaging only with “a Holocaust survivor.” They are responding to another human being’s story with care, curiosity, and emotional investment.

Throughout the experience, students also confront the process of dehumanization itself—how Jews arriving at camps like Auschwitz were stripped of their names, possessions, hair, dignity, and humanity. They see the tattooed number on Anita’s arm.

During one visit, a student asked whether she had ever considered having it removed.

“Why should I?” Anita replied. “It’s not my shame. If I removed my number, I’d join the ranks of Holocaust deniers.”

The room went quiet.

That exchange opened conversations about Holocaust denial and distortion that many students had never fully considered. Students listened to Anita’s responses not as abstract historical lessons, but as testimony from someone they had come to see as real and trustworthy.

These moments matter because students are not simply memorizing facts about dehumanization. They are witnessing the enduring human impact of it.

Understanding Jewish Life + Anti-Semitism

As the exhibit evolved, we also realized that many students lacked even basic exposure to Jewish identity, Jewish diversity, and the long history of anti-Semitism beyond the Holocaust itself.

Too often, students encountered Jews primarily through tragedy, without broader understanding of Jewish life, peoplehood, culture, continuity, and resilience.

That realization led us to expand portions of the experience to more directly explore questions such as:

Who are the Jewish people?
How has anti-Semitism evolved across time?
What does it look like today?
How do stereotypes, conspiracy theories, and dehumanization continue to spread?

Throughout Voices Against Hate, students encounter stories not only of persecution and loss, but also of migration, continuity, resilience, hope, and survival. This matters because it helps students understand that the Jewish people cannot be reduced to a single story.

Too often, students encounter Jews only through stereotypes or the lens of victimhood. By including diverse stories of Jewish life and experience, students begin to recognize Jewish communities as layered, living communities with varied histories, traditions, and identities.

What has been especially meaningful is seeing independent evaluation affirm many of the moments we were witnessing firsthand. Students consistently described the experience as engaging, authentic, interactive, and emotionally meaningful. Evaluators observed students leaning in during testimony sessions, asking thoughtful questions, returning to continue conversations, and remembering stories long after their visits ended. 

Again and again, we watched students move beyond memorizing history into emotionally engaging with individual human stories.

Recently, after visiting the exhibit, a group of fifth graders repeatedly used one word to describe what they felt:

Empathy.

That response mattered deeply to us.

Because empathy does not mean erasing differences or pretending all experiences are the same. It means recognizing another person’s humanity, emotions, and experiences—even when their life may be very different from your own.

Belonging as a Foundation for Learning

One of the most meaningful outcomes was the impact on belonging.

Students frequently described feeling more connected—not only to the material, but to one another and to their broader school communities. Many reported feeling more seen, heard, and understood.

For many Jewish students in particular, the experience was deeply affirming. Seeing Jewish history and identity explored in nuanced and human ways—sometimes through stories connected to their own families—helped many feel more visible and valued.

Learning does not happen in isolation. It happens in relationship.

When students feel connected, they are often more willing to engage with difficult questions, remain in conversation through discomfort, and listen more openly to perspectives different from their own.

Looking Forward

We are living in a moment shaped by headlines, slogans, social media, and algorithms designed to reward outrage, snap judgments, and oversimplification. Complex issues are often reduced to single narratives, and entire groups of people are flattened into categories.

Young people are constantly navigating online spaces that can reinforce division, misinformation, dehumanization, and isolation—often without opportunities to slow down, reflect, or meaningfully engage with perspectives different from their own.

Holocaust education requires the opposite.

It requires reflection, nuance, curiosity, and the ability to hold complexity. It asks students not only to learn what happened, but to consider how and why it happened—and what happens when societies stop seeing people as fully human.

No single approach will reach every student or community. But through this work, several lessons have become clear to us:

Start with connection.
Honor complexity.
Center individual stories.
Create space for reflection.

Because when students begin to see one another as fully human, history no longer feels distant.

It becomes personal.

And when that middle school student quietly said, “She’s like me,” history was not being simplified.

It was becoming human.

I have spent the past few weeks speaking to students about my grandfather’s story of surviving the Holocaust. The truth is that I do not really know his full story. It is something I have struggled with my whole life. That struggle guided me in a way I could not have imagined.

My “3G” story is a bit different because I lived with my grandparents for much of my childhood, and my grandfather was more like a father than a grandfather to me. I’m not exactly sure how old I was when I first started asking him to tell me his story. I was young, probably too young to hear those stories. Still, I had a sense that those stories were vitally important to me and my identity. He never saw it that way. His answer was always the same. “Don’t ask any questions.” 

The older I was the more I begged to know about what had happened to him, and the more I asked the more agitated he became. At some point, my desire for him not to be upset outweighed my need for information. Now that he is gone it’s one of my biggest regrets. As I grew into adulthood, I should have convinced him that I was ready to hear his history. I should have insisted that this was part of my identity too, and I would bear witness to that history and carry it responsibly. If I just knew some of what I don’t know maybe I would be a better advocate for Holocaust education. Perhaps a better speaker that would make more of an impact on those students I speak to. 

This gnawing need that left me with a hole in my persona fueled my research efforts. I began with knowing only my grandfather’s name, birthdate, and the name of his hometown in Poland. It was a starting point, not a great one but a starting point. I initiated my online exploration spending hours on several sites typing in every combination of known facts and variations of the spelling of his name. Emails were sent to anyone I thought could offer the slightest bit of assistance. I waited for responses that took weeks, even months of patiently wishing that I would get some type of response. 

The day that I received an email from Yad Vashem was an amazing day of discovery. Suddenly, I had digital copies of lists of Jews which included his name, his prisoner registration card, and so many documents in a language I could not read. Yet there was no mistaking the one word that connected so many of these documents—Jude. It astounds me how well the Nazis kept records. The sheer number of lists I received is amazing. I spent the better part of the day at my kitchen table looking at the documents and trying to translate them. Suddenly I noticed his signature on one of them. I tried to imagine him signing that simple piece of paper. Such an everyday thing to do, but at that moment I’m sure it felt as if this time signing his name could be a life-or-death moment. My mind often wanders, and I try to envision what my grandfather would have done in the horrendous situations he faced. I have to stop myself knowing that this is undoubtedly what my grandfather wanted to shield me from.

From that first day of uncovering our history something in me changed. All this research started just after COVID lockdown when I had lost my job. My new knowledge made me realize that what I wanted to do was educate. I immediately went to the Holocaust Museum Houston website and requested information about becoming a volunteer. Soon, I found myself interviewing for their docent program. I had no idea how much work would go into completing the docent program. Weeks of classes and practicing. Reading every book and watching every documentary I could and learning how to get through a tour without crying. As my training came to an end it was clear I had found my true calling. Most of my tours are with school groups. Some students have no knowledge of the Holocaust when they visit the museum; some have already had an in-depth lesson. No matter what their level of understanding, my goal is always the same. I aim to give them as much information about the Holocaust and how it happened with a touch of my family history. 

I found myself a part of a community at the museum that I didn’t even know was exactly what I needed in my life. It might sound strange but sometimes that museum feels like home to me. I became involved with the survivor and descendant groups, a board member, joined committees, became an instructor for new docents, and a public speaker. 

People often tell me they are sure my grandfather would be so proud of me. Frankly, he would be very unhappy about it. He would say something like “teach people something else.” Once I was in the museum and was cornered by someone spewing anti-Semitic rhetoric. It was very frightening but somehow, I stayed calm and thankfully we have an amazing security team at the museum. When it was over and I took a few minutes to gather myself I could hear my grandfather telling me that should be the last time I ever set foot in the museum. That is exactly what he would have said; he would have forbidden me from going back. That day I looked up and said, “Sorry but I won’t stop. This is my life’s work now.”

I’m still doing research and searching for more information now incorporating my grandmother. My wish is that I will have the gaps in our story filled in as much as possible. I know that this is something that may not be possible. I want these stories to continue long after I’m gone. We should all aim for these stories to be told for thousands of years. Let these stories remind people what can happen when hate goes unchecked, when democracy fractures, and when humans forget that in essence we are all the same.

Arnie Newfield was born on February 27, 1942, in Westerbork Holland, a transit camp at the time.

His parents were Lisel and Armin Newfield, and he had two older brothers—Bernard (Dutchy) born in July 1934 and Marcel born in June 1938.

His family originally came from Vienna, Austria, where his father was a successful wholesaler supplier. They were comfortable, and his parents were not religious but celebrated Jewish culture. 

In March of 1938, Germany annexed Austria, known as the Anschluss. Not one bullet was fired, and the Nazis were welcomed with open arms.

The night of Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, Arnie’s father came home early and was able to hide and missed being arrested. His mother decided it was time to leave and go to Holland.

In January 1939, his father took his older brother Bernard to Holland, and Arnie’s mother followed with Marcel a few months later.

All Jewish refugees were sent to Westerbork—a “collection” camp. When Germany occupied Holland in May 1940, all the foreign Jews were already in one place. 

 His parents had jobs in the camp and were part of the infrastructure, which gave them some level of protection. They also lived together as a family. 

When Arnie was born in February 1942, his family was able to hold a Jewish naming ceremony for him.

Starting in the summer of 1942, deportations began from Westerbork to ghettos and death camps. Arnie’s family was fortunate that they remained until 1944.

 In March 1944, Arnie, his mother, and brothers were sent to Ravenbrück (in Eastern Germany) and his father was sent to Buchenwald.

His parents made a pact that they would meet back in Holland. Not if—when.

In March 1945, his mother and the three boys were sent to Bergen-Belsen, which was the same time that Anne Frank died at Bergen-Belsen.

It was a three-mile march from where the cattle cars left them and the camp. If you did not march, you were shot. Arnie’s mother had to get herself and her three boys to the entrance of the camp. She decided to put Arnie on a truck so she could walk with Bernard and Marcel.

When she arrived at the camp, she found out where Arnie was and demanded him back. The SS woman guard helped her retrieve him all the while yelling and screaming at Arnie’s mother. 

On April 15, 1945, the British liberated Bergen-Belsen. An American soldier who was Arnie’s mother’s half-sister’s (Aunt Edith) husband (Fred) was asking for the Newfeld family and was able to locate them. He was instrumental in helping them get proper care and transport back to Holland. 

They arrived in Holland in September 1945 and soon after Arnie’s father arrived. A beautiful family picture was taken October 19, 1945, that hangs in Arnie’s home now.

They lived with Protestant bookbinders and then received the paperwork to travel to the United States. Arnie was around 5 years old and remembers all his family, especially his only grandfather (Opa) who met the ship. 

His younger brother Billy was born in 1948.

Arnie’s knowledge of his family’s experience comes from his mother. His father never spoke about his experience in Buchenwald, and his brothers also would not speak.

But Arnie speaks about his family’s experiences and is proud of being a survivor.

His message to students and the world:

Be kind. Enjoy life. Live every day to your best. Be the best person you can be.

Growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust gave me sensitivities and a way of seeing the world different from that of most American Jews. As the child of Holocaust survivors, I inherited contradictory impulses: fear and defiance, insecurity and pride, grief and resilience. I grew up with pain that engendered anger, though over time that anger slowly eased as the 1970s became the 1980s became the 1990s, and America grew kinder and more hospitable not only to Jews, but to many groups that had once faced prejudice and discrimination.

As I entered adulthood, I built what felt like a normal American life. I became a lawyer, married, bought a home, joined a Reform synagogue, and had children. Slowly, I came to believe that the traumas that shaped my parents belonged to another time and another world. After all, I was living the American dream.

Yet I remained unusually attuned to cultural and political currents, and sometime during the 2010s I began to feel a vague but persistent unease. Then, in 2019, that unease hardened into something more concrete: a fear that the social foundation I had always assumed was secure was beginning to crack. For the first time in my life, I found myself wondering whether the kinds of forces that shattered my parents’ world in 1930s Czechoslovakia could emerge in twenty-first century America.

My life changed profoundly after that realization, and the direction of that change was shaped by the experiences my parents carried out of Europe and passed down to me. 

My parents, who were fluent in English, often spoke their native-tongue Hungarian, which they never taught me. I resented that because much was said around me that I could not understand. My mom said it was because they wanted me to be fully Americanized. This was true, but not the whole truth. Hungarian also functioned as a shield behind which painful memories and tragedies could be concealed. Yet the concealment itself created in me a dark and persistent sense of loss.

Sometimes my parents discussed things in hushed tones tinged with anxiety. Other times Hungarian-speaking ladies, approximately my mom’s age, came to visit. They would fawn over me, grip my face on both sides with their lotioned hands, and tell me in Hungarian what a sweet little darling I am. They gave me anxiety.

We usually had relatives over for Passover, that most American of Jewish holidays. I can still picture my mother sitting at the head of the dining room table nearest the kitchen, speaking normally about something mundane. Then suddenly a thought would enter her mind—or she would mention her parents or her younger brother Marci (Martin in English)—and she would burst into sobbing for a few shocking seconds, provoking in me some mixture of embarrassment, pity, and horror. The table would grow silent. A few moments later she would compose herself and resume the conversation. I would tell myself silently: just pretend that didn’t happen.

Unlike my mother, my father rarely spoke about the Holocaust or the war. He mostly kept those things sealed inside himself, though he sometimes spoke in idyllic terms about his childhood. He was the youngest of four children: his middle brother was John, after whom I was named; his older brother Alex; and his sister Ann. He spoke of riding horses and skiing in the Carpathian Mountains, of his closeness to John, who could “fix anything” and dreamed of becoming an engineer, and of his father, who owned a successful moving business with his brother Julius, who lived next door.

That world was destroyed after Hungary annexed the region and aligned itself with Nazi Germany. The Jews of Ungvár were driven into forced labor battalions and ghettos, and ultimately deported to Auschwitz and other death camps. The most I ever heard about John was that he died somewhere in “Rush-ee-uh.” Ann was murdered along with her husband and child. Alex, who had become a banker, was sent to a labor camp. His wife and child were murdered, I believe in Auschwitz. I absorbed these fragments as a child because asking too many questions seemed too painful for everyone involved.

I have often wondered whether my father’s stoic silence and refusal to grieve contributed to the heart attack he suffered when I was eleven years old. He survived and recovered enough to continue supporting us, though not enough to ease the additional anxiety this placed on my mother. As for me, that was the end of bowling and McDonald’s on Saturday mornings.

Despite my father’s reluctance to talk about the war, I gradually learned fragments of his story from my mother. Only much later, through adult conversations and historical research, did those fragments begin assembling themselves into something resembling a coherent narrative.

Somehow Alex escaped death. Forced into a Hungarian Jewish labor battalion and reportedly condemned to death for attempting to flee and join the partisans, he escaped before the sentence could be carried out and eventually reached Soviet-controlled territory. There he joined the First Czechoslovak Army Corps and became involved in reconnaissance and partisan operations behind German lines during the final years of the war. Only recently did I discover military history references substantially confirming these stories, identifying my uncle as Capt. Alexander Kováč, connected to special reconnaissance and parachute units operating during the Slovak National Uprising.

According to the family stories handed down to me, my father also escaped from a forced labor camp but was captured by “the Russians” and jailed. Somehow Alex found him there, secured his release, and brought him into the anti-Nazi partisan forces. For years these stories sounded almost unbelievable to me, suspended somewhere between family legend and history.

What I eventually pieced together was that after the Allied victory, Alex was placed in charge of a district that included Komárom, my mother’s hometown, and my father served there with him. Their duties included de-Nazification—interrogating suspected collaborators and turning captured Nazis over to Soviet authorities. It was amid this devastated postwar landscape that my father met my mother. She had survived Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and forced labor at a Siemens factory in Bavaria, where Hungarian Jewish women were worked long shifts in support of the Nazi war machine.

As I grew older and occasionally became able to speak with my mother about the war, she told me how she survived by staying close to her friends Kathy and Rita. They shared food and cared for whichever one of them was sickest or nearest to despair. My mother saw Marci a few times in Auschwitz. Once he managed to give her food. After the war, when she returned to Komárom, she was told that Marci had been seen alive during the liberation of Auschwitz. She waited for him to come home, and waited. He never returned, and she never learned what became of him.

Like many concentration camp survivors, my mother was determined to marry and have children, both to rebuild a shattered life and to deny Hitler a posthumous victory over the Jewish people. It was in this atmosphere that she met my father, whom she later described to me as “a tall, handsome man on a white horse.” Together, my father and Alex helped protect my mother and her friends from predatory Soviet soldiers who roamed the region in the chaotic aftermath of the war. They also brought to justice a former friend and neighbor who, before the deportations, had agreed to hide jewelry from my grandfather’s modest jewelry shop but instead stole it for herself.

Under the postwar Czech government, my father was placed in charge of a factory in the Sudetenland, from which the German population—most of whom had supported Hitler—was being expelled. During this period, my father became disillusioned with communism. Unlike Alex, who had become an influential government official, my father saw where the new regime was headed. In this he had an ally in his cousin and best friend James Kovac, Julius’ son. Growing up, I knew him simply as “Uncle Jimmy.”

I had many “uncles” as a child, even though my only actual uncle was Alex. So little family remained that more distant relatives—and even close family friends—were folded into the category of family itself. I also had a “grandfather,” Emil Moskowitz, the father of my father’s first cousin Harry, whom I knew as “Uncle Harry.” Emil and his wife Hanna sponsored my parents when they emigrated to the United States in 1946.

We visited “Grandma and Grandpa” in their Passaic apartment on Saturday afternoons. Grandpa often greeted me at the door with a Cadbury chocolate bar or a shiny silver half-dollar. A deeply religious man, he kept a reel-to-reel recorder in his bedroom with a microphone through which, he confided to me, he would “talk to God.” 

I remember reading a newspaper article about one of “Grandma and Grandpa’s” major wedding anniversary celebrations shortly after I had learned to read. Imagine my surprise when I was not listed among the grandchildren. No explanation made sense to me. Not until well into my teens did I fully understand that an uncle is the sibling of a parent, and a grandparent the parent of a parent. Only then did I begin to grasp that the loss was not only my parents’ loss, but mine as well.

Uncle Alex reacted strongly to my father’s decision to emigrate to the United States. On the eve of my parents’ departure, he reportedly instructed my father to “tell Truman to go to hell.” At the time, Alex remained deeply committed to the postwar communist project in Czechoslovakia. In later years, however, Alex came to believe that my father had made the right decision and that the true villain was Stalin rather than Truman.

In time, Alex himself fell victim to the Stalinist system he had served. Like many Eastern European patriots and anti-fascist fighters who had allied themselves with Soviet power during the war, he eventually became politically suspect under the paranoid and repressive atmosphere of postwar communism. The anti-Semitic atmosphere surrounding the Slánský trials and related purges in Czechoslovakia shattered the faith many Jewish communists had once placed in the Soviet system and left deep scars on those who had believed they were helping to build a more just world.

In the early 1950s, Alex was sentenced to prison, where he served approximately five years before being released and, in my father’s words, “retired.” Before his downfall, he remarried without disclosing his Jewish background and had three children. One was named Leslie after my father. Another, Eva, studied architecture, and while still a university student witnessed Soviet tanks crush the hopes of the Prague Spring in 1968.

My mother, who desperately wanted children, was unable to conceive for many years after the war, which led her into profound depression. I was told that in 1958 she suffered what was then called a “nervous breakdown” and attempted suicide by “sticking my head in the oven.” She was hospitalized in what my family referred to as “a sanitarium” for approximately six months. I later learned that Uncle Harry had given my father the money to pay for her treatment.

After leaving the hospital, my mother underwent therapy for many years. I was born on New Year’s Eve 1961, roughly a year after my parents moved from Passaic, where they had been renting, to suburban Nutley, where they purchased the house in which I grew up. My mother later told me that she had finally “learned to relax,” allowing her to become pregnant. I was an only child. Throughout my life my mother would often tell me, “You are my everything.”

In the summer of 1978, when I was sixteen, I traveled with my father to Budapest and Lake Balaton in Hungary to vacation with Alex, his wife, and my three cousins. Uncle Jimmy came as well with his daughter Karen. Uncle Alex and I played chess in the grass overlooking the lake. He spoke little English, but whenever I was close to winning he would smile, shrug his shoulders, and say, “No Army.” By this he meant that after losing too many pieces—the queen, rooks, bishops, knights, pawns—he was powerless and defenseless.

At the time, I was curious about communism. One evening we went to a nearby Cuban restaurant and waited what felt like hours for service while employees visibly lingered about doing almost nothing. I ordered “veal à la Castro” largely because Castro himself interested me. That night I became violently ill and remained sick for much of the trip.

Only later did I come to understand that there had been a larger purpose behind the visit. My father, Uncle Jimmy, and Uncle Alex were quietly planning for Eva to defect to the United States.

In 1980, Eva was granted permission to visit us in the United States for one month. Before she left, Uncle Alex reportedly warned her that she might discover her relatives in America were Jewish. She didn’t know.

When Eva failed to return, the Czech government realized she had defected and sentenced her to prison in absentia. My father hired a lawyer, secured the conviction papers, and used them to demonstrate that Eva would face political persecution if forced to return to Czechoslovakia. That is how my cousin eventually received political asylum and became an American citizen.

Eva lived with us for approximately a year, during which time she learned English while my father worked to secure the documents that would allow her to seek employment. One afternoon, while my father was at work, Eva, my mother, and I sat together in my parents’ bedroom going through old family photo albums. Suddenly Eva came upon a photograph of her father, Uncle Alex, together with his first wife and child. She stared at it in shock and confusion, unable to understand why her father appeared with another family she had never seen before. My mother then had to explain the terrible truth to her.

I had never seen the photograph before and was almost as shocked as Eva. Perhaps I had heard at some earlier point that Uncle Alex once had another wife and child who were murdered during the Holocaust before he married Eva’s mother, but I had long since buried the thought. I remember sitting there silently while Eva and my mother spoke, trying to imagine the psychological shock Eva must have been experiencing. To the best of my recollection, she and I never discussed the moment afterward. I would not even have known how to begin.

Eventually, I got on with my life. I moved west across the country to attend law school in California, then east again to Brooklyn for my first job as a lawyer with the District Attorney’s Office, where, for the first time in my life, being Jewish did not feel unusual. There I met other children of Holocaust survivors, with whom I immediately felt a special bond.

After three years, I returned to California, where I worked for five years as a litigator at a small law firm. Eventually, feeling restless with the practice of law, I attended UCLA and UC Irvine for a year to prepare for admission into a Ph.D. program in English literature. This additional study was necessary because my undergraduate background had been in political science and history.

I had always been drawn to politics because somewhere in the back of my mind, I felt a need to remain alert to political and historical currents so that if the danger of anti-Semitism were to return, I could recognize it in time to protect myself and my family. To my surprise, I discovered that the study of literature increasingly resembled political theory. This was intellectually exciting but also faintly unsettling. The emerging intellectual currents—postmodernism, postcolonialism, and identity politics—struck me as potentially dangerous for Jews, though when I raised these concerns with a Jewish professor, he assured me there was nothing to worry about.

I was later admitted to Rutgers on fellowship, an outcome that proved fortunate because I sensed—correctly, as it turned out—that my father did not have much time left to live. My father passed away on Independence Day 2001, just two months before September 11. I have often felt relieved that he did not live to witness that day or the world that followed it. By then I had left graduate school and started my own law practice, and my wife and I had our first child.

My mother passed away in 2018 at the age of ninety-four. I have often felt relieved that, like my father before her, she did not live to witness the resurgence of anti-Semitism and fear that would emerge so soon afterward.

Around the time of my mother’s death, I happened upon Douglas Murray’s book The Strange Death of Europe. At the same time, I was following Jeremy Corbyn’s rise within the British Labour Party and the prevalence of anti-Semitism there. Although Murray’s book focused primarily on immigration and cultural change rather than anti-Semitism itself, the juxtaposition of these developments caused me to worry not only about the future of Jews in Europe, but increasingly about what could happen in the United States.

Then, in 2019, I saw something taking shape in my hometown of Highland Park, New Jersey when anti-Zionist activists successfully organized and staged a reading of the propaganda book P is for Palestine for young children at our public library. As I began looking into the event, I realized that this was not spontaneous local activism, but part of a sophisticated, organized, and well-funded movement. I was particularly struck by a petition supporting the reading that was backed by Samidoun, which I quickly learned was a front organization for the U.S.-designated terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

At that moment, something crystallized for me. I understood that my life would henceforth be different, and that the history of my family and my people—as handed down to me through my parents—required me to oppose what I was seeing. I joined with other Jews in my town to resist these forces and have remained active in opposing the scourge of anti-Zionism ever since.

John Woolf was born Julius Wolf on October 31, 1928, in Carei, Romania.

He was raised in Buštino, Czechoslovakia, which became Hungary in 1939. John’s father, Herman, owned and operated a flour mill and electrical generating plant, employing more than 100 residents of their town. John and his family had a happy life in Buštino, surrounded by extended family and spending vacations in Carei with John’s mother’s family.

In 1939, everything changed when the Hungarians came to occupy the region of Carpatho-Ruthenia, which included the town of Buštino. Restrictions on Jewish life began to take hold, and eventually Herman had to give up his business.

In May of 1944, the Jewish residents of Buštino were forced from their homes and required to move into the Mateszalkaghetto in Hungary.

Conditions in the ghetto were horrific, and John and his family were forced to sleep in the local cemetery until they could find housing in an attic in one of the ghetto buildings. The attic was terribly hot, and there was not even enough room to stand up.

In June of 1944, John and his family were forced onto a cattle car and transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon arrival, a camp prisoner advised him to lie to the SS guards and tell them he was 18 years old, rather than his real age of 15. John and his father were both selected for hard labor, and separated from John’s mother, Kato. Kato was later sent to endure slave labor at Stutthof Concentration Camp. 

John and his father stayed together throughout their time in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but were separated in January of 1945 as the Soviets approached. They were both sent on a death march to Gleiwitz, and then placed on trains to Oranienburg, Germany, during which they were separated. Herman later admitted to John that he purposely left him to increase John’s odds of surviving. Miraculously, they both survived and were reunited with Kato after being liberated by the American army in March of 1945.

Most of John’s extended family was murdered in various concentration camps, but John and his parents were eventually able to come to New York to join his uncle who had been living in America since 1939. They arrived in the United States on August 5, 1946.

John knew no English upon coming to the U.S., but his determination and grit helped him achieve at school and eventually become an electrical engineer, traveling all over the world to work on electronic systems in tanks and aircrafts. John’s travels even took him to Germany, where he learned that not all Germans hate Jews, and he even developed a few German friends.

Today, John lives in Massapequa, New York, and participates in Holocaust education programs such as the UJA’s Witness Project. He feels that sharing his experiences with future generations will inspire them to create a more positive and less prejudiced world.

Renée Silver was born in 1931 in the region of Alsace-Lorraine known as the Saarland.

This territory had gone back and forth throughout history being occupied by France and Germany. Renée spoke both German and French fluently, and her father fought for the Kaiser during the First World War.

In 1935, Hitler visited Saarland because of a plebiscite vote to determine if it would stay independent or become part of Germany or France.

Renée’s maid took her to the Nazi parade where an SS officer put Renée on his shoulders so she could see Hitler passing by in an open car as part of the motorcade. Ninety percent of the population voted to be part of Germany in 1935.

The family moved further into France to Alsace Saar Gamein (mainly Christian), where Renée went to school. After Kristallnacht in 1938, two cousins and her grandmother came to live with them as well.

In 1939, the Second World War broke out and many of their neighbors saw them as potential German spies since her father and grandmother were considered German.

The family was arrested and put in jail for seven days. Then they were deported to Gurs, a camp built in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. Renée was nine years old and her younger sister was seven.

The conditions at the camp were horrendous—full of mud, bed bugs, fleas, rats, lice, and little food.

Her father, who suffered paralysis on his left side due to a war injury, was hospitalized. In June of 1940, Northern France was under German occupation; they were released and returned home. Many laws against Jews were enforced making life extremely difficult. 

On Renée’s last day of school in June of 1942, Renée was supposed to be presented with a scholarship to an esteemed secondary school. The principal announced in front of the entire school that she could not give the award to Renée because she is Jewish and the award was then given to another student.

Then the roundup of Jews began, and the family decided to leave for the Vichy controlled part of France in Toulouse and then Leon. Renée and her sister were separated from her parents and placed in hiding in a small village called Le Chambon. They were given false papers and new Catholic identities. 

The citizens of the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon under the direction of Pastor Andre Trocme risked their lives to rescue and hide Jews, especially children. In addition to providing shelter, the citizens of the town obtained forged identification and ration cards for Jews to use. It was estimated that the people of the area of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon had saved between 3,000 and 5,000 Jews from certain death.

Renée and her family were smuggled into Switzerland, a trip of 187 miles. They remained there till after the war and were able to emigrate to the United States in 1947. Today, Renée is 95-years-old.

My name is Kristine Keren (née Krystyna Chiger), and I’m a Survivor. I was born on October 28, 1935, in Lwów, Poland.

My father heard that the Lwów ghetto would be liquidated at midnight, so we hid in the cellar, located in a barracks. We used to go there almost every afternoon after my mother returned from work, and we stayed hidden there because we expected a big action from the Nazis. 

At that time, I was seven years old and Pawełek, my brother, was three. We left the cellar and headed toward the Poltva River. Finally, we reached the sewer. It was very dark and wet; when I went in, I felt terribly scared, and I was trembling with fear. I stayed calm, but I kept asking my father how far our destination was. 

In that sewer lay many stones with yellow worms crawling upon them. We put all our belongings on the stones and sat on them. Water was dripping down the walls, and there was such a stink in the air that we could hardly bear it. I saw big, ginger rats that ran past us like hens. 

I eventually got used to it; Pawełek was not afraid at all. For five full weeks, day and night, I lay on Mum’s lap and Pawełek on Dad’s lap. We could neither move nor get up. There were 20 other people there. From the very beginning, Polish sewage workers brought us black bread and margarine every day. They were afraid of being noticed, so they entered the sewer from various places through manhole covers that they opened. I remember their names: Leopold Socha, Stefan Wróblewski, and Jerzy Kowalów. In the sewer, we had a carbide lamp. It was hanging on a hook fixed between stones, and it was on all the time. The Poles brought us carbide for it. Dad used to bring us water in a jug, which he carried in his teeth as he had to walk bent over. I felt unhappy there. I wasn’t allowed to speak loudly. I could only whisper in Mum’s ear.

I dreamed that the war was over so I could go out into the world. I missed the sun, the air, and the flowers the most. Once I asked our friend to bring me some field flowers. I wanted to see a dog and a horse very much, whereas Pawełek missed birds the most. But I didn’t tell Mum about it because she had a lot of other worries.

It was summer. When it was raining, water flowed into the sewer; when toilets were flushed, the sewer was full of water, and we had to lean tight against the stones just near the wall in order not to get poured on. Pawełek was very little at that time. He was just three years old, and he cried quite often. Mum was very nervous then as she was afraid that somebody would hear him, and we would be found. On one occasion, one of the men who stayed in the sewer with us was so angry with Pawełek that he threatened him with a gun. It didn’t help as Pawełek started crying even louder.

After five weeks, other sewage workers went into the sewer to clean it, and they stumbled upon us. We turned off the light, but one man lit a cigarette lighter, and they noticed us. We had to run away. We ran along the main sewer, not knowing the direction. Suddenly, we saw “our” sewage workers who had food for us. They were very surprised and asked us where we were going. Daddy explained what had happened. They led us to a side sewer and ordered us to stay there overnight. They also promised us that they would find us a new shelter the next day.

In the morning, they came back, and they led us along the Poltva River through the main sewer. The walk lasted almost half a day. Yet I felt much better then. I could walk, I didn’t have to sit anymore. I don’t know why, but the whole burden seemed to have fallen from my heart; I felt so happy that I whistled with joy. The way was very difficult. We stepped on various pipes and holes. I was barefoot, in a summer dress, and trembled with cold, yet I was cheerful. A pin got stuck in my leg, but I removed it myself as I didn’t want to disturb Mum.

Finally, we reached a concrete pipe. It was so narrow that we had to crawl on all fours into it. The cold was unbearable, and we had no place to sleep. The next day our friends ordered us to get out, and we resumed our march. We removed a plank and went into another pipe. There were 11 of us. The rest died because they left the sewer. Kuba Leinwald, my uncle, drowned in the Poltva River. He went out to get some water during the storm and was taken by the flow.

In the new sewer, we felt much better; we had more room. We slept on bunks built by Dad from planks that he found in the sewer. There were four such bunks. I slept with Dad and another man. I felt squeezed like a herring in a barrel. It was very uncomfortable. Mum slept with Paweł and another woman. We had one carbide lamp, which was on day and night. 

Rats would try to eat our bread, but Daddy would threaten them with a stick and they would run away. But Pawełek would feed the rats like hens. He would throw them breadcrumbs and boiled potatoes. They would come up close to us and squeak, but he wasn’t afraid at all. 

We had a couple of bowls and a Primus stove brought by our good sewer workers. One of the women would cook soup and coffee and Mum would divide it among us, so I wasn’t hungry. One old, gray-haired, stoop-shouldered lady fell ill and died. Another woman gave birth to a child, but it died and was thrown into the Poltva River. Two young ladies were on duty by turns and kept an eye on maintaining clean conditions. The lamp was on all the time, and I didn’t know day from night, but I felt that day was marked by the visits of our sewage workers. 

When it was raining, water dripped into our shelter by a pipe through which we could barely see grating and a little light. Sometimes I noticed a sunray, but a very faint one. Once I went into that pipe to look at the world, but I didn’t see anything. I could only feel a faint breath of fresh air. I can’t even express how much I missed the sun and the fresh air. I heard cars moving above our heads, I heard people’s voices and the laughter of children playing, and I often thought that I would have been very happy if I had been able to play like them. Once I heard a child crying and telling its mother that it wanted to sleep.  

I fell very ill with measles, Mum later told me, and Pawełek caught the illness from me and then had a hoarse throat. One of the sewage workers brought eggs for him. He had to carry them in his teeth, wrapped in a handkerchief because he had a bag with food in his hands, and he had to crawl on all fours to get to our shelter.

On one occasion, a Primus stove caught fire. We were all terrified. We threw rags on it, but they started to burn as well, so we extinguished the fire with burnt-out carbide. I was very scared, but Paweł was even more terrified; he ran to the furthest bunk and hid himself there. After smothering the fire, we were all charred, and we looked like ghosts. On another occasion, the next summer, we were flooded. After a great storm, heavy rain started to pour into our shelter. Our friends took shovels and started pushing water into the pipe to divert the flow and save our shelter. Fortunately, they succeeded.

We spent 14 months there. Our sewage workers helped us all the time. When we ran out of money, they brought us food for free. 

At the end of our stay in the sewers, I heard sirens whistling and cannons booming. Although I knew that the Russians, our liberators, were coming, I felt very scared. Finally, one day we heard loud knocking at the grating. It was our sewage workers, who gave us a sign that we were free.

We walked for a couple of minutes along one sewer, then we got into another pipe, full of spider webs. Then we removed the lid and finally, our workers got us out.

We looked so miserable that we didn’t even resemble children. People took pity on us. One woman bought us gooseberries. When I saw the sun, people, and flowers, I was overjoyed. I felt very, very happy. But Pawełek was crying, and he wanted to return to the sewer as he wasn’t used to light, and he was afraid of people.

Born in Łódź, Poland, my grandmother Eva Moskovitz grew up in a large and loving family. Before the war, there were fifteen members of her immediate family. By the end of the Holocaust, only a handful of siblings remained. During their imprisonment in Auschwitz and later Bergen-Belsen, they witnessed unimaginable suffering. My great-grandmother held one of her daughters as she died during transport to Auschwitz.

Throughout the war, my grandmother and her siblings did everything they could to remain together. They even changed their birthdays in the hope that the Nazis would classify them in the same age group. They understood that there was strength in numbers.

My great-aunt Genya stayed with my grandmother Eva throughout the war. In April of 1945, just days before liberation, my grandmother was gravely ill with typhoid and close to death. Her body had been weakened by years of starvation and forced labor. Refusing to give up on her sister, Genya risked her life by crossing a road under guard to search for food. She found several decaying potatoes and brought them back to Eva. Our family believes those half-rotten potatoes helped keep my grandmother alive until she received medical treatment after liberation.

I often think about what Genya must have felt in that moment. After years of hunger, she could easily have kept the potatoes for herself. Instead, she chose her sister’s life over her own immediate needs. Her courage, compassion, and fierce loyalty continue to inspire me.

One of Judaism’s central values is chesed, or loving kindness. True chesed is more than a thoughtful gesture or charitable donation. It is the willingness to show up for another person, even in the darkest moments. By refusing to abandon her sister, Genya preserved my grandmother’s dignity and, in doing so, affirmed her own.

My memories of my grandmother Eva are limited. She died when I was in first grade after years of suffering from post-traumatic stress, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease. Although I knew her only briefly, her story has remained central to my identity. I am deeply grateful to my cousin Sally, Genya’s daughter, for preserving these family memories and sharing them with me.

As a third-generation survivor, I carry not only the trauma of my family’s past, but also the values that sustained them: loyalty, resilience, and loving kindness. When I think about my grandmother and Aunt Genya, I am reminded that survival was not only about enduring suffering. It was about choosing to care for one another, even when doing so required extraordinary sacrifice.

My family, my father, my mother, and my sister Rachel who was 10 years older than I, we were a very lucky family. We survived the war.

My parents were born in Warsaw, Poland, and lived in very religious homes. My mother, the second youngest child of nine children, went to Polish school and learned how to play the piano. They were comfortable. But my father, the youngest of three children, lived in extreme poverty, having lost his father when he was three; he started to work when he was 12-years-old. He learned a trade which sustained him all his life. He made ladies handbags. He became a craftsman, an artisan.

At 18, he became secular and the joined the Jewish Socialist Party, called the Bund, and fought all his life for better conditions for workers. After World War I, he went to Belgium and met my mother. They were married in Brussels on January 6, 1922, and Rachel was born a year later.

My father tried a few times to come to America, but to no avail. In 1926, they moved to Paris where they joined the Bund, and Rachel went to Yiddish school.

I was born in 1932, and, at that time, the law was if your parents were foreigners, you had to be naturalized. So, at age of one, I was naturalized and became a French citizen, the first in my family.

My father also joined the French Socialist Party and with political connections was able to obtain French citizenship for his family. So, in 1938, my parents and Rachel became French citizens. In France before the war, Jews from Poland did not receive French citizenship.

I had a very pleasant early childhood. I went to kindergarten where they showed us Charlie Chaplin movies. We called him Charlot.

September 1, 1939, everything changed. The Germans invaded Poland; France and England declared ware against Germany. They then invaded Holland, and on May 10, 1940, Belgium fell and they started to march through France.

Panic. My father said: “Where the Germans are I do not want to be. So let’s leave.”

On June 11, 1940, three days before they marched through Paris we fled to a small village in the center of France in the Massif Central mountains, similar to the Catskills.

My parents rented a small room above a watchmaker’s shop. The next morning I woke up and saw my father in front of the mirror saying: “I am all gray.” He became gray overnight. He had beautiful black hair the day before.

A week later the town crier went around beating his drum and called everyone to the village square, where the mayor announced in tears that France had signed an armistice with Germany; our country had lost the war.

I asked my father, what does armistice mean? He explained to me that it was the end of the war, but we Jews were in danger because of a very bad man called Hitler.

France was divided in two parts: the occupied zone from the north to the center of France, Paris included, and the rest of the country became the Free Zone ruled by the Vichy government.

We were lucky to be in the Free Zone area so we went to Lyon, the second largest city in France. We rented an apartment outside of Lyon. My father worked in the apartment; Rachel went to work for a big French company; I went to school; and my mother had the hard task of trying to feed us. The winter of 1940 and 1941 was very harsh, and the Germans took everything—food, fuel, etc. It was hard. Other Bundists came to Lyon so they formed a resistance network.

Being French citizens, my family was at an advantage, and they used that advantage to help other Jews. Rachel, 18 at the time, became their courier. My father made her a pocketbook with a false bottom to store false identity papers inside. Rachel, as part of her position in the network, would travel by bus or train and deliver false papers to Jews in hiding. She would help families memorize their new identity, speak to them in Yiddish if they did not speak French, and sometimes travel with them to the Spanish or Swiss border.

In 1941, Suzanne Buisson, who had been in the high echelons of the French Socialist Party, came to see my father and asked him: “Will you help us?” My father said yes. So she gave him pamphlets to distribute and paste on the walls in Lyon. He then became the liaison between the two resistance networks. Suzanne was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and deported. In the Montmartre section of Paris there is a Square called Suzanne Buisson, Resistante.

We had people staying in our apartment from time to time. A couple from Belgium stayed with us almost six months. They never went out. My mother risked her life to provide food for everyone. She was Mother Courage.

France had the highest rate of Jewish survivors of all the countries in Europe. I think it is due to having a free zone for more than two years. Jews with visas could sail out of France, and families with enough cash could hide in little villages and blend with the scenery.

My parents had friends who were hiding in a very small village, and they mailed us a rabbit. My mother declared to us: it is a chicken. We did not argue with her. We were so happy to eat meat.

We had a radio and listened to the BBC every night to hear real news. One night, Churchill spoke to us in perfect French and told us: “We shall not forget you.” It was so uplifting. Churchill was a great man.

In November 1942, the American army landed in North Africa, and the Germans occupied Lyon. We lost our naturalization and became foreign Jews so we fled to Grenoble in the Alps, which was occupied by the Italian army who did not bother Jews.

In Grenoble as in Lyon my father worked in the apartment we rented; Rachel worked in an office; I went to school; and my mother would pass checkpoints and go to farms outside of Grenoble and bring us good food. The resistance became more intense, and life became more dangerous.

One time, Rachel had to go to a very important meeting run by the network. She got sick and could not go so my mother went in her place. It was very risky but she went anyway.

In the fall of 1943, the Germans occupied Grenoble and all of France: we were trapped. In the middle of the night, we were awakened by endless ringing of the bell, knocking on the door. The French police were looking for Italian deserters, since we lived in an Italian neighborhood.

Of course we did not know that; we thought they were looking for Jews. My father decided not to open the door. The police were ready to force the door down, but luckily our neighbors told them there are old people living here who are never home. The police left but I was shaking for the rest of the night. Our neighbors saved our lives but we were no longer safe.

I was sent to a Catholic boarding school in the mountains where I went to mass every Sunday, skied, and pretended to be happy. But in early 1944 Jewish children were arrested by the Gestapo in a nearby convent so my parents decided to send me to Switzerland. A group of parents, most of them Buddhist, hired a passeur, a smuggler, and I joined a group of ten children and took the train from Grenoble to Annemasse, a border town. 

Along with us were a married couple. The wife was very pregnant, and she began having labor pains in the train. On our arrival to the town, the smuggler told use to wait for him at the train station, and he took the couple to a hotel. He came back and took us to a field behind the buses, telling us to lie still and wait for his return.

It was very cold and getting dark, and in front of us was a road with German tanks and big trucks passing by. The oldest among us was 18 years old. He had a thermos with hot coffee and crawled from child to child giving us a sip. I will never forget him.

Meanwhile, at the hotel the smuggler had been arrested and gave away our location to the French police, who took us into custody. The officer at the station was given carte blanche by his superior, that is do what you want, so instead of delivering us to the Germans they took us to a boarding school at the border. From there, the lady principal and her assistant risked their lives by sneaking us to the French/Swiss border, and we climbed a barbed wire fence to safety.

Because I climbed that barbed wire fence I have grandchildren today.

In Switzerland we were arrested by the authorities because we were illegal aliens. We were taken to an internment camp called Le Camp du Bout du Monde—the camp of the end of the world. We were not treated well, slept on wooden floors, and were not well fed. I was hungry all the time. But they saved our lives. 

I then was placed in a foster home in Basel, then in a convent, then to another foster home in a tiny village near the late of Thun. I was very unhappy and very worried about my parents and Rachel.

During the war, names like Rachel, Sarah, David, or Jacob were death sentences. So Rachel became Raymonde officially and to all her friends. The American army liberated Grenoble on my birthday, August 22, 1944. On that day, a friend of the family came to the street where they lived and in front of their window shouted with all of her strength: Rachel. They were free.

In March 1945 I came back to Grenoble and was reunited with my family. A month later we returned to Paris. We had survived.

Three hundred years ago, French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote:

A startling and unique spectacle to see a people expatriated, having no land for over two thousand years, a people damaged, blamed, mixed with strangers for even a longer time, rejected, a people dispersed throughout the world, a people persecuted, despised by all nations, still conserving their customs, their laws, their traditions.

Athens, Sparta, Rome perished an left no children on earth. Zion destroyed, did not lose their children. They saved them, they multiplied, extending throughout the world. And they always recognize each other, they mix with all people but never conform, they have no chief but are always a people, they have no country but are always citizens.

We Jews will survive, no matter what happens.

I was born in 1933 in Rexingen, Germany. I had an older sister named Inga who was born in 1930.

We lived with our parents Jacob and Meta Levi but eventually we moved in with my maternal grandmother Oma Betty. We were fortunate children surrounded by loving grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Little did we suspect the horrors that would befall members of our family. 

I clearly remember Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938. I was five-years-old, but the trauma of that night is still clear in my mind. The German soldiers came to our house looking for Jewish men and my father hid in the horse feeding trough. Soon after that, my father had to work for the Germans, giving up his own cattle business. There was daily fear and constant worry. I recall that when the German soldiers would parade and goose step through the town, our parents held us tightly.

On a warm day in early July of 1939, I remember boarding a train with my sister and with my mother. I was bundled up in multiple layers of clothing including a winter coat. We arrived at a port where my mother put us on a boat, and we said our goodbyes. It must have been torture for my mother to do that not knowing when or if we would be reunited and who was going to take care of us. We were six- and nine-years-old respectively. Today this is known as the Kindertransport.

We arrived in England on July 7, 1939, but my memories of this time were very dim. We took the train to London and then to Manchester, where we were to live with Willie and Ray Shalyt. Willie was a Russian Jewish immigrant who owned a successful linen business.

The Shalyts had two daughters, Celia and Pauline. We lived better than we did in Germany with this family. In September, Inge and I started school and learned the language quickly. Our new peaceful life with the Shalyts was interrupted by World War II and the German bombing of England. One day in the fall of 1939, Willie took us to school with suitcases. All the children in town were being evacuated to the countryside for safety from the German bombings. We boarded the train and headed for Fleetwood, a small fishing village. I remember standing in the town hall, while the townspeople selected their new charges. Into our lives came Maude and Muriel Bailey. We were well taken care of by kindly Anglican ladies, who even helped us keep our Jewish identity. A rabbi came to town every few weeks to help us celebrate Jewish festivals so we would not forget our religious customs. On school holidays, we returned to Manchester to stay with the Shalyts. One Passover, American soldiers came to our house for a Passover seder. One of the soldiers was from New York. He wrote to his wife about us, and she, in turn, got in touch with our parents, who escaped Germany and made their way to the United States. At some point in 1940, Willie took us to London so we could get American passports for our eventual immigration to the United States. We experienced our first real encounter with the terror of war. After leaving the American embassy, air raid sirens went off and we ran to Victoria Station to catch our train. Searchlights streaked the sky and guns were blasting away. We rushed onto the train and arrived in Manchester safely but with the sound of sirens still ringing in our ears.

In the summer of 1944, Inge and I left Fleetwood, and went to live in a hostel in Blackpool with other German Jewish refugees. Most of the girls had no knowledge of the whereabouts of their parents and they were very jealous of Inge and myself. This jealousy flared up every time we received a letter or package from our parents.

We went to Fleetwood quite often to visit Maude and Muriel Bailey. Just before the Christmas holiday in 1944, we packed up all our belongings and went back to Manchester. We were told that we would be leaving for the United States. Weeks passed and nothing happened. Finally in February of 1945, we went to Liverpool to board a Danish cargo ship called the MS Eria. The ship carried about 50 passengers, mostly German Jews. Being young, we did not recognize the multiple dangers of crossing the Atlantic in wartime because of the German U-boats. The second hazard was the stormy Atlantic weather. On the first night aboard the ship, we went to the dining room and enjoyed one of the most lavish buffets we had ever seen in our lives. After five years of living on rations, we were overjoyed and ate as much as we possibly could. The next morning, as we left Liverpool, I immediately became seasick and stayed that way until we docked in the United States.

By the time we were reunited with our parents, it had been more than six years since we had seen them. Tears came to my eyes when we arrived at Pennsylvania Station in February of 1945. At first, I did not recognize my father, but my mother looked the same.

We took the noisy subway to Washington Heights where many German Jews who recently arrived had settled. My parents lived in a dilapidated apartment building, in a sparsely furnished four-room apartment with crumbling walls and a musty smell.

Our adjustment from a well-to-do, basically unsupervised lifestyle to living in a relatively poor and very strict household was not easy.

My parents believed that life centered on work, and money was not to be spent on anything but the necessities. Baths were only to be taken once a week and coordinated with our weekly change of clothes. We were young teenagers then 13 and 16 and had a very hard time dealing with these new restrictions. I’m sure my parents also had difficulty adjusting to taking care of us and all the economic struggles they faced.

As I grew older, I regretted not discussing with my parents the emotions they felt upon our departure, the reunion and the disappointments we children must have been in their life. Such conversations never did take place, but I am sure it would have made a big difference in both our lives.

My name is Mireille Taub. I was born in Paris in 1938. I didn’t know my name was Mireille until I became a citizen at 13—my parents always called me Mimi. They loved opera, so everything they named was named after an opera. Mireille is a very bad opera by Gounod. Mimì, of course, is the character in La bohème. My sister is Raymonde Elaine—Elena, “la Belle Hélène.” My father’s company in America was called Manon, after Manon Lescaut.

My father was originally from Poland, from a small city on the Polish-Russian border—the youngest of five children, the only surviving male, very much spoiled by the entire family. His father had died when he was young. When the First World War broke out, my grandfather—the chief baggage expediter for the main railroad line connecting St. Petersburg with Warsaw—evacuated the entire family into Russia. My father spent his early years in a small town near St. Petersburg, frequently beaten up as the outsider and the Jew. When the war ended and they returned, his mother died; he was totally orphaned at about 13. He went to live with an older sister in Warsaw, worked odd jobs, saved what he could, and eventually went to France on a visitor’s visa—overstaying it and becoming an illegal immigrant, an itinerant farm worker who followed the crops in Brittany. He learned to speak French so well that nobody ever realized he wasn’t born there. He eventually went back to Paris and learned his future occupation: he became a very skilled leather worker.

He met and married my mother during the Jazz Age. They were a very romantic couple—they got married on New Year’s Eve and tangoed their way across Paris. My mother was also Polish, born in Warsaw into a comfortable family. She had attended a Polish gymnasium, which was quite unusual for Jewish children at the time, and her mother hired a tutor for Hebrew and Yiddish. She had a beautiful singing voice and had voice lessons—hence her love of opera. I vividly remember her singing all over the house and correcting me when I played the piano badly, which was most of the time.

They never thought of going to the United States, but events changed that. Family legend has it that my great-great-grandfather visited America at the turn of the century, declared it “a land of barbarians,” and returned to Warsaw. His brother stayed in Cleveland, Ohio—and that was my grandmother’s family in America. My father had a cousin who had immigrated to Chicago before the First World War and became not only very wealthy, but well-connected—connections that would prove invaluable in saving our lives.

Dad applied for visas. My mother, my sister, and I came under the American quota safely, as my mother had become a French national. My father was a problem—he was considered stateless, a man without a country. Cousin Charlie in Chicago was able to get him what was called a Nansen passport, created by the Norwegian diplomat Fridtjof Nansen for people fleeing the Russian Revolution.

In September of 1939, our entire family—grandma, her husband, aunts, uncles, cousins—were on vacation in Fontainebleau when Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany. We returned to Paris: the men to join the army, the women to wait and worry. My father tried to enlist and was told, “France will surely win the war, and, if we need you, we’ll call you.” My mother was greatly relieved.

The first part of the war was called the “Phony War”—very little military action from September through April or May, when Nazi forces overran Holland and Belgium and entered France. My father was called up again at the end of May. He went to his commanding officer and said: “I’m married. I’m Jewish. Wife, two children. I have papers to go to America. If I serve in the army, which I would be proud to do, I might not live.” The commanding officer said, “Dismissed.”

My father had told my mother to pack a small suitcase. We took what he told me was the last train leaving Paris as the city was about to fall. The train was bombed—Nazi strategy was to bomb civilians—and we were lucky to get off alive. We started walking toward Bordeaux. I still have the shoes I walked in. We couldn’t get into Bordeaux; it was a closed city. The French government had retreated there to negotiate surrender. Thousands of refugees milled around the outskirts.

My father met the American consulate officer who had prepared our papers. She recognized him immediately—his paperwork was so different from any other refugee’s. She needed to get across France from the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean coast, because the American consulate was being established in Marseille. She offered us a ride across France. My father provided the languages and the expertise. We crossed through Toulouse, across the Pyrenees, and eventually to the Mediterranean coast. We stopped briefly in Perpignan, where my sister needed new shoes and I, as a toddler, wandered off—they found me at the bottom of a shoe cart, very happy. A fixation with shoes.

We crossed the border into Spain. My father told me we weren’t allowed to get off the train—Franco was taking a transit tax from refugees but didn’t want them in his country. We continued on to Portugal, where my father secured passage on a Greek freighter traveling in convoy across the North Atlantic, with real concern about Nazi submarines. We arrived in the United States on August 11, 1940.

We were stopped briefly at Ellis Island—I had broken out in a rash. My mother convinced the doctor it was due to trauma and poor food, and he let us through. He was probably smart enough to know what it was. It wasn’t until years later, after retirement, that I broke out in a rash again—shingles—and realized what I’d had at Ellis Island was chickenpox. I had always wondered why I never caught children’s diseases—but, oh, yes, I had.

My father’s first word in English at Ellis Island: “taxi.” A typical New York City taxi driver took us on the scenic route all over the city and eventually brought us to HIAS (the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society). Dad had $10 left in his pocket. The New York family caught up with us within days. Cousin Charlie had found my father a job at Marshall Fields in Chicago, but the New York family said, “Why are you going to Chicago? New York is the fashion capital of the world.” So we stayed in New York. After the war, my father opened a small factory designing luxury handbags. I grew up in Brooklyn, a very happy child.

Little Madeleine

One of the stories about which I’ve written elsewhere is my cousin Madeleine. She was the daughter of my mother’s sister Séraphine—Séma—and her husband, who were rounded up with the Jews in Paris in 1942. Séma and her husband were sent to Vel d’Hiv, then to Drancy, then to Auschwitz. For years, the family suspected that little Madeleine, who had been the top-ranking student in her entire district, might have survived. On one of my visits to Yad Vashem, I met the chief archivist and we went through all the records. I found her listed on one of the transports. She had been separated from her parents and sent to the French prison camp at Beaune-la-Rolande, and, within several months, she, too, was sent to Auschwitz. She never survived.

Years later, I took my granddaughter Sydney to Paris for her bat mitzvah. We visited the Shoah Memorial and museum. Before the trip, I had written to a cousin asking her to make sure our family names were on the wall of names being constructed. I showed Sydney those names—family names, friends of family whose stories I knew. Then the archivist pulled out a large photograph. She called them “happy family photos”—typical vacation snapshots, everyone smiling—but, in this one, everyone was wearing the Star of David. It was taken during the occupation: a mother, father, and two teenage boys. She asked if I recognized them. I said “no”; I know names, I know stories, but I don’t remember faces. As she started to put it away, I said, “Oh, my God. That’s my mother’s cousin Daniel.” She asked if I was sure. I said I wasn’t certain, but I remembered seeing pictures of him in my mother’s album, and I gave her contact information for my cousin Nina. She said, “Probably not, because we’ve already figured out who they were—but your story confirmed what we knew.” I am not a weepy person, but I was quite upset. My granddaughter said, “Why are you crying, Grandma Mimi?” And I said: “I think of the one and a half million Jewish children who were killed, and how few have anyone left to identify them.”

Fifi

Another story concerns a family friend named Maurice Fefferman, known as Fifi. He was 10 years older than my husband and had come from Poland. During the occupation, he was part of a group of men who organized to assassinate Nazi officers—the ones who gave the orders. Many were Jewish refugees, but not all. They worked in pairs, with a pact to protect each other until death. One night on a mission, Fifi’s partner was killed. Fifi turned back to help him, was wounded and captured, brought to a French hospital, tortured—and revealed nothing about the group.

I thought it was a remarkable story of bravery. I learned later that a film was made about this group—Army of Shadows—a wonderful film, though, unfortunately, I can’t show it at our Holocaust museum because of the subtitles. Many years later, walking through the 9th arrondissement in Paris, I passed an old building with a plaque: dedicated to Maurice Fefferman, killed in 1942. I knew the story was real, but finding that plaque made it come home. I use it now in our “Acts of Courage” programming at the museum. When Maurice died, his body was released to his family for a Jewish funeral. My father-in-law attended that funeral, knowing it would be surrounded by Gestapo—another act of courage.

Uncle Léon

My mother’s brother, Uncle Léon, was my favorite among my three surviving uncles. He was charming, spoke many languages including Esperanto, and told me wonderful stories as a little girl—some of which I suspected may not have been entirely true. The story I tell about him is this: he was waiting in line for food during the occupation. The hours for Jewish shoppers were even more limited than for non-Jews. He was flirting with the young woman behind him, because Uncle Léon was good-looking and a bit of a flirt. When the shopkeeper returned with his order and said it was the last of whatever he’d requested, the woman said she wished she had it—she needed it for a sick relative. Léon, the charmer, turned to her and said, “Pour vous, mademoiselle,” and handed it to her.

They went their separate ways. Several days later, he was caught in a roundup and marched with a group of men into the local police station. The secretary at the desk was the young woman with whom he had been flirting. She managed to separate him from the group and convey to him that the others would be sent east by bus. Everybody knew what that meant at that time, but she managed—I’m not quite sure—to get him out of the building into the streets, and, from there, he went from occupied France into “unoccupied” France. I don’t know how she managed to do that: I suspect that she was part of a resistance network, and the people in the network helped him move from one place to the other. From there, he traveled south through Marseille to Casablanca, where he boarded a ship called the Serpa Pinto. On that ship, unbeknownst to each other, were my grandmother, her husband, my father’s sister and her husband, and my cousin Marcel. They all arrived in the United States in 1942.

David + Jacques

My husband David’s story will appear in another anthology, but briefly: he was sent out of Paris to a small farming community in the south when France surrendered. His brother Jacques, fighting for the French Foreign Legion, was later dismissed and joined him there. In October of 1940, Jacques took Davide back to Paris. On the train, a Nazi soldier examined David’s papers—“David Taub,” not a typical French name—and the officer must have known he was Jewish. He let them through.

Days later, Jacques was summoned to the local mairie (town hall) and arrested. He was sent to the prison camp at Beaune-la-Rolande. My mother-in-law was determined to get him out. With the help of their French neighbors—railroad workers, many of them socialist and part of the early resistance—she traveled with David from Paris to a small hamlet near the camp, knocked on a stranger’s door, and said simply, “I’m here to help my son escape.” The woman who answered—Madame Dubois—said “Absolutely not,” then invited them into the kitchen and said “We’ll talk.” Her gendarme son helped devise the escape. Jacques, a trained electrician who was permitted to go into town on a work pass, walked out with a platoon of workers on the designated day—the guard at the gate was in on it—and David had a bicycle waiting for him outside. Jacques pedaled off.

He eventually made his way to Toulon, which was being bombed by the British. He went to his employer for help, was rebuffed, realized he could be denounced, and never returned. He joined the Maquis and survived the war.

David himself was sent back to the farming village for safety. This time the conditions were harsher—he was treated like a farm laborer, given all the chores, and never quite enough food. The woman of the house said they never had to wash his plate, it was so clean. The only person who truly loved him there was the old great-grandmother, who spoke only Provençal. When a student once asked David if anything good had ever happened to him during the war, he pointed to his teeth and smiled. “I never had a cavity,” he said. “They took away my sugar ration.”

The priest in the village came to David the second time and said, “I’ll see you in church tomorrow.” David said, “I’m not converting.” The priest replied, “I’m not trying to convert you; I’m trying to save your life.” David became an altar boy and the leader of the Catholic boy scouts. He was told not to go swimming in the local stream because, obviously, he was circumcised. His name on the posted school rankings was always buried near the bottom to avoid attention—but he was the top student.

David always called his story “the kindness of strangers,” because so many decent people had reached out to help them—without obligation, without reward, simply because they were decent.

Twenty years ago, a young cousin of mine, Déborah, was chatting at the school gate with another mother at the start of the school year. They discovered that both their grandfathers had been hidden on the same farm during the occupation. Their two children became lifelong friends. Jacques nominated the farmers for Yad Vashem recognition, and David—the only one still alive who could remember them and what they did—wrote the testimony. The ceremony was held in France, and the two children who had met at the school gate gave the speech. I think that’s quite heartwarming.

I was one of the lucky ones. My dedication to my book, The Last Train to Paris, says something to the effect of: “The joke’s on you, Hitler.”

We survived, we laughed, and that’s exactly how I feel. We made a life for ourselves in America—and I hope we’ve transmitted those legacies to our grandchildren.

“Jude.” “Parasite.” “Race defiler.” “Profiteer.” “Subhuman.” “Corrupter.”

It started with language. 

What began at the political fringes preceding the Holocaust, gradually entered mainstream institutions. Jewish businesses were boycotted, while newspapers, universities, academics, and political movements helped normalize exclusion and hate followed by acts of violence. 

These ideas were further reinforced through eugenics, a morally corrupt racist theory that justified anti-Semitism as a rational scientific approach. Psychiatry and academia both lent intellectual legitimacy to theories portraying Jews as a social problem to be managed and eliminated. These ideas ultimately paved the way for the mass murder of six million Jews. 

“Colonizer.” “Oppressor.” “Zionist.” “Baby killer.” “White supremacist.”

The words have changed, but the scapegoating, moral exclusion, and abject hatred are chillingly familiar. 

Once again, Jews are recast not as individuals but as a uniquely malevolent collective threat, blamed for the world’s injustices and stripped of humanity. 

We are living in frightening times again. The latest variant of anti-Semitism, “anti-Zionism,” is a hate movement and ideology aiming to eliminate the only Jewish nation, Israel. Anti-Zionism draws on the cycle of anti-Semitism seen throughout the ages, repackaging libels and conspiracy theories into modern political language. In this latest iteration, Jews and Israelis are marked as uniquely oppressive or dangerous. Decades of disinformation filtered into the West has normalized this inversion, pushing ideas once considered extreme into the mainstream. 

The current academy, the mental health field, and many other arenas reflect a remarkable similarity to pre-war Germany. Informed by Soviet and Islamic anti-Zionism, this newer Western embodiment characterizes Israel, Israelis, and the Jewish people as powerful evil-doers.  

This is happening despite the formal codes of ethics developed in the mid-twentieth century to protect individuals from the harms that emerge when ideology overtakes clinical judgment, truth, and humanity. They emerged in part from the moral reckoning that followed World War II, when the world confronted the extent to which physicians, psychiatrists, and academics had participated in or remained silent about Nazi medical crimes and eugenic programs.

Soviet psychiatry offers another warning. Political dissenters were at times diagnosed with fabricated disorders masking ideological disagreement as mental illness. When psychiatric authority merges with political ideology, diagnosis can become a tool of repression rather than care.

Conversion therapy also offers a cautionary example. For decades, some clinicians attempted to alter patients’ sexual orientation despite mounting evidence that the practice was psychologically harmful. Ethical standards eventually recognized that therapists must not impose ideological or moral frameworks onto clients under the guise of treatment.

In recent years, a new illustration of this phenomenon has emerged. Ethical language has increasingly been used and distorted to advance political frameworks that extend unrelated to clinical care. When professional ethics are used to legitimize ideological positions, the purpose and efficacy of those codes is lost. 

In social work, particularly with the 2021 revision to the NASW Code of Ethics emphasizing social justice as a core principle, a marked shift occurred, compelling therapists to integrate activist frameworks not only in community organizing contexts but also directly into the treatment room.

Now, training programs, supervision, and professional guidance increasingly emphasizes naming systems of power, privilege, and oppression as central to clinical formulation and intervention. Social work has always grounded attention to context in the concept of Person-in-Environment. Reflected in the bio-psychosocial model, this framework asks therapists to consider social forces such as culture, systems, racism, poverty, and community as influences on a client’s experience, not as determinants of identity or moral worth.

What was once intended as a contextual lens for understanding clients has become hardened into a rigid ideological framework. Ironically, practitioners are engaging in the very thing they warn against. To use their language, they are “colonizing” the treatment space with their own projected assumptions. In this era of anti-Zionism in mental health, these therapists feel emboldened to judge who is deserving of care. This is dehumanizing, unethical practice.

Politicized approaches like decolonizing therapy will welcome Jews as long as they adhere to anti-Zionist ideology. Since the majority of Jews are Zionists, this places Jewish clients in an extremely vulnerable position. They will only be accepted for treatment if they sever part of their identity. These litmus tests have emerged both in treatment and professional spaces in ways that would not be acceptable toward any other group of people. 

Consider a client seeking care for depression, anxiety, and/or relationship issues. A therapist who believes “therapy is political” may deliberately redirect the focus of treatment to a rigid binary, rather than honoring a client’s lived experience and their connection to identity, nation, and culture.

Like the pseudoscientific eugenics movement that once shaped psychiatric practice and the conversion ‘therapies’ of the past, politicized ideological therapies can pressure clients to adopt ideas that have little to do with why they sought care. The results can be harmful by fostering anger, confusion, or self-loathing rather than healing in clients.

Some therapists insist that questioning the integration of a therapist’s personal politics into the treatment room means you are “right-wing” or morally suspect. Others frame the critique as if we are advocating that therapists should sit with a “blank slate.” Both claims are misleading and false.

Ethical practice has never required the absence of self. It requires restraint, care, and what therapists often call the “use of self.” The issue is not neutrality; it is the unethical practice of imposing ideology onto clients.

Some therapists openly describe their approach as “de-colonial” and “anti-Zionist.” How might a Jewish or Israeli patient be treated in such a space? Would they even be accepted as a patient? This is harmful practice that colonizes the treatment room with ideology and ego rather than honoring the patient’s identity and right to self-determination.

In spaces meant for learning, some clinicians present propaganda as fact. In one example, a clinician and professor presented a diagram of “the colonized mind” at an international Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) conference. Within this image of a brain, Zionism is equated with mental illness, fascism, misogyny, homophobia, rape culture, colonialism, and the worst social pathologies of our time.

The individuals who spread this disinformation use a contrived distinction between Zionist and Jew as a kind of “cover.” Meanwhile, there is no empirical research that shows efficacy or positive outcomes of decolonial therapy. Despite that, it and other political therapy approaches have been embraced by the academic and mental health institutions writ large.

These politicized frameworks paint Jews as a hyper-white race who are oppressors themselves. Because Jews are not a race but an ancient ethnicity that predates the seventeenth century invention of race as a social construct, they do not fit neatly within contemporary anti-oppressive models. 

The founders of modern psychotherapy like Freud and others are portrayed by decolonizing therapists as Eurocentric white supremacists. One popular proponent of decolonizing therapy, a licensed psychologist, calls herself a “rage doctor” and accused two contemporary Jewish founders, Richard Schwartz (Internal Family Systems) and Francine Shapiro (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), of misappropriation. The attempted erasure of Jewish contributions to mental health is well underway. 

Most social work graduate programs do not include the Jewish lived experience or Jewish history within their core curricula as is done with other groups. In some graduate programs, decolonizing and liberation-oriented approaches are included as required coursework. Texts and articles by extremist radical theorists that discuss or justify forms of violent resistance are sometimes assigned as legitimate course material, and anecdotally, it does not seem to be intended for critical analysis. In some cases, there appears to be theoretical endorsement of this kind of perspective as a valid form of social justice. 

Another reported incident took place when a social work professor took her graduate social work class to the Holocaust museum only to exclude Jews from their own history. The professor lectured her class on the horrors of the Shoah without naming the mass extermination of the Jewish people, instead focusing exclusively on other groups who were targeted and killed during this period, completely erasing Jewish victims. Experiences like this shape what students come to understand as ethical and historically accurate.

Relatedly, there have been incidents in some professional spaces, including listservs, of membership questions or informal expectations regarding political alignment on issues related to Israel. Disagreement with the dominant narratives in these spaces, in some cases, has led to mocking, exclusion, or professional ramifications. 

When two employees of the Israeli Embassy, Yaron Lishinsky and Sarah Milgram, were shot to death in a terror attack outside the Jewish Museum, Jewish social workers posted on the NASW listserv about shock and grief. They were met not with sympathy or empathy but with accusations of genocide, calls to “Free Palestine,” and other libelous rhetoric. Therapists have been kicked out of this and other collegial groups without rational discourse if they push back on anti-Zionist narratives. 

Similarly, on another occasion, a benign acknowledgement of Jewish Heritage Month on NASW’s Facebook and LinkedIn pages were immediately plastered with Nazi inversion, abuse, and objectifying statements about Jews and Israelis. This scenario has been common. 

In practice, many Jewish students and clients have reported feeling marginalized and highly distressed in many mental health spaces. There is a growing body of literature that examines and documents concerns related to anti-Semitism, identity-based exclusion, and reported harms experienced by Jewish professionals, students and clients alike.

The Jewish Social Work Consortium (JSWC) was founded in response to concerns regarding the dehumanizing rhetoric, identity-based harm, traumatic invalidation directed at Jewish social workers and clients, and lack of institutional responsiveness within the profession. Some of the most disappointing revelations was discovering that even our governing bodies, who would presumedly speak to the breach of core ethics, would collude with their silence. 

Over a two and a half year period, our professional organization, National Association of Social Work (NASW), leadership has not responded to our countless individual letters, organizational missives, petitions, and more. These communiques were written as pleas regarding NASWs Jewish members who, as stated earlier, had been subjected to threats, insults, and mockery on their own listserv and in other public social work institutions and spaces.

In February 2026, NASW issued a public statement against the proposed expulsion of the Israeli Union of Social Workers from the International Federation of Social Workers. The vote was set in motion by the Ireland, Hellenic, and Spanish social work unions who clearly had other reasons for excluding the Israeli union. The proposed vote for expulsion was not grounded in any documented ethical violation; rather, it effectively singled out an Israeli institution. 

NASW’s public statement followed our petition that garnered over 13,000 signatures, along with media coverage and Jewish legacy organizational support and pressure. While NASW rightly finally spoke up against the potential vote of exclusion, subsequent requests for follow-up dialogue and meetings remain unanswered. Something foundational in our field has become cruelly inverted, and it’s increasingly reflected in social work academia, language, and professional attitudes.

Anti-Zionism has become increasingly normalized. There have been “Zionist lists,” which include the names of Jewish therapists projected as “Zionists,” often added because of a Jewish sounding surname. The message: Do not refer prospective clients to “The Zionists” (read: Jews).

Current anti-Zionist mental health frameworks replace older anti-Semitic libels with white-coding, portraying Jews as hyper-white oppressors. In this inversion, “Zionists” become the “bad Jews,” recast as the new Nazis. This is what former United States Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Deborah Lipstadt describes in her horseshoe theory: political extremes that appear opposite yet ultimately meet in the same place, each relying on libels and conspiracy theories to spread Jew hatred.

While liberation psychology and decolonizing therapy may have been born with good intentions, these approaches have increasingly been co-opted into rigid frameworks that categorize entire groups, such as Jews or Israelis, a “the other.” Some liberation psychologists argue that it is ethical, or even required, under professional codes to confront clients who they might deem “fascist” complicit in injustice.

Anti-Zionist bias in many mental health professional and clinical spaces can drive this practice. Therapists may see themselves as morally obligated to “correct” or “comfort,” echoing earlier historical movements such as eugenics that presumed moral or scientific authority to enforce ideological visions.

Ethical therapy requires therapists to sit with curiosity. Listening deeply to clients’ lived experiences and exploring the interplay of culture, nationhood, race, and personal history. In social work this is called practicing cultural humility. Ethical practice resists ideological imposition and instead fosters space for clients to articulate their experiences and make meaning of their identities.

The therapeutic relationship depends on trust, openness, curiosity, and cultural humility. Clients should not have to wonder whether they must adopt a therapist’s ideological framework in order to be understood or supported. Ethical practice requires therapists to examine their own biases without projecting them onto clients, creating space for people to articulate and make meaning of their own experiences rather than being subjected to political enforcement.

When ideological conformity begins to replace curiosity and human complexity, history doesn’t feel so distant anymore. Indeed, as one walks through the halls of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum it’s difficult not to feel alarmed. While we are not in the Holocaust, one can’t help but feel a chill of recognition at what unfolded during those years prior to the mass extermination of Jews and others: the dehumanizing language, the moral exclusion, the socially accepted hostility toward Jews, the groupthink. 

We know from history that hatred rarely begins with violence. It begins with rhetoric, mockery, collective blame, and most dangerously, the normalization of treating a targeted group as undeserving of empathy.

What we are seeing now feels like an echo of those earlier years. Jews and Israelis are facing harassment, intimidation, assaults, the targeting of synagogues and businesses, and deadly acts of violence. The language may have shifted from “the Jew” to “the Zionist,” but the dynamics are recognizable. In fields meant to center healing, reflection, and care, the normalization of abandoning our most basic ethical commitments and respect for human dignity reveals the danger of this moment. 

If mental health, social work, and psychology are truly committed to these principles, our institutions must take heed from the halls of history and recalibrate before further damage is done.

A massive banner has been unveiled outside Houston, Texas, featuring the face of President Donald J. Trump alongside a deeply emotional and controversial message:

“President Donald J. Trump, the first recipient of the FIFA Peace Prize, in association with FIFA, solemnly honors the memory of the thousands of innocent children murdered by the Islamic regime and its proxies.”

Below those words stands another statement impossible to ignore:

“The Islamic regime and its proxies target and kill children.”

The banner is not simply political. It is a cry. A plea. A memorial. And, above all, it is an attempt to force the world to look at something many believe has been ignored for far too long: the suffering and deaths of children across the Middle East connected to violence, proxy wars, repression, and instability.

At the center of the artwork are children standing on a football field. Not soldiers. Not politicians. Not militants. Children.

One side represents the 12 Israeli Druze children killed while playing football in Majdal Shams on July 27, 2024. The other side represents children killed inside Iran during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement of 2022 and the years of unrest and repression that followed.

Standing between them is the image of a young female referee representing Zahra Azadpour, a young footballer whose death became symbolic to many supporters of the movement.

The imagery is intentionally painful because the subject itself is painful. And the goal is simple: to make the world stop looking away.

The Purpose

This mural confronts a reality the world has too often ignored.

Human rights organizations including Amnesty International have documented cases in which Iranian security forces allegedly killed children during protests using live ammunition, metal pellets, and severe beatings.

The broader regional conflict has also devastated children far beyond Iran’s borders. In Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, years of proxy warfare, militia activity, and instability have contributed to child casualties, displacement, trauma, and humanitarian collapse.

To supporters of this mural, these are not isolated tragedies. They are part of a larger pattern of violence, extremism, repression, and proxy warfare that has stolen childhoods across the Middle East.

This mural attempts to bring those realities into one frame.

It places these children together—not as symbols of conflict, but as victims of it. Not as statistics, but as lives.

It asks the world to see clearly:

These were children.
They were playing.
They were living.
And they were killed.

Why Donald Trump?

The inclusion of President Donald J. Trump in the artwork is deliberate.

To supporters of the banner, Trump represents a leader associated with strength against the Islamic regime and a willingness to confront Iran and its regional proxy network publicly.

The artwork frames him symbolically as a figure who could help place international attention back onto the children caught in the middle of conflict, repression, terrorism, and war.

The banner is also tied emotionally to the approaching FIFA World Cup in the United States. Football is the universal language running through the entire mural.

The children are not carrying weapons; they are standing on a football field. A place that should symbolize joy, competition, laughter, and dreams.

Instead, the field becomes a memorial.

A Plea to the White House

The message of the banner ultimately transforms into an open plea:

Please see these children.
Please acknowledge them.
Please do not allow politics to erase their names.

The request is bold:

To allow the banner to be displayed in cities and venues throughout the United States during the World Cup.

Not as propaganda.
Not as a campaign.
But as a memorial.

A reminder.

A challenge to the conscience of the world.

The Message

Every name is a life.
Every life was a child.

This mural exists so they are not forgotten.
So their names are seen.
So their stories endure.

A Call to See

This work is an invitation—to pause, reflect, and look beyond headlines and borders.

Because, before anything else, they were children.

My name is Lusia Milch, and I am a survivor of the Holocaust. 

I was born December 25, 1930, to David and Necha Rosenzweig in the small Polish town of Skalat. In 1941, there were about 5,000 Jewish people in my hometown. 

Skalat was an idyllic town. There was a square adorned with four seventeenth-century stone towers, a moat, and a lot of greenery. The Jewish community, the shtetl of Skalat, was vibrant and various businesses and trades flourished, which sustained the life of a thriving Jewish community. 

My childhood was wonderful in every way. I was surrounded by family, including grandparents and many uncles, aunts, and cousins who were my playmates. I grew up in a lovely home with a living room that was beautifully decorated. I remember my mother’s cooking as being the best in the world. Every day we had soup made with ingredients fresh from the local market.

After Hitler came to power, everything changed for the Jews. Jewish people became easy targets for hate as anti-Semitism grew. Jewish stores were boycotted and negative stereotypes of Jews were promoted through propaganda. Children were taught the Jews cannot be trusted because they were only interested in money and taking advantage of people. 

The vicious anti-Semitism grew so severely, I feared what would happen to us. I vividly remember the first day of the German occupation of my town. On July 4, 1941, the Nazis entered Skalat with their swastika flags. The non-Jewish Ukrainian population of Skalat lined the streets, beautifully dressed in their national colors of yellow and blue to warmly welcome the Germans. Immediately, those townspeople who had been our neighbors and our friends turned on us and carried out a day of terror against the Jews in Skalat. 

Like wild beasts, they grabbed innocent Jewish men from their homes and on the streets and viciously beat them in the town square while the Germans looked on, took pictures. Gone was my carefree childhood and the freedom as a Jew. Soon came the decrees. First, we were ordered to wear a white armband with a Star of David on our right arm. Second was forced labor. Every day, hundreds of Jewish men were ordered to work in the quarries, chopping boulders into stones for gravel, which the Germans used to pave roads for the tanks and trucks. 

Third, a decree forming the ghetto. The once thriving shtetl of Skalat became a ghetto filled with thousands of Jews from surrounding towns. The population more than doubled, and the people had to live on the streets in cramped conditions without sanitary facilities. Diseases spread quickly. Life was reduced to surviving one day at a time. The Germans came into Skalat with the goal of destroying us. Over a period of two days, more than 3,000 Jews were transported by truck and by train to the extermination camp, Bełżec, where they were immediately murdered by gas. 

Seven hundred of us survived the roundups. My once beautiful world was reduced to a cramped homemade bunker in the basement of our neighbor’s house. We slept there, three or four people in one bed. Whatever possessions we had were on the bed. We ate on the bed. We planned escapes on the bed. My life was reduced to whatever I could do on the bed. 

At the end of the second year of the German occupation, the time came to leave our hiding place. My mother explained we were going to a non-Jewish family who had promised to hide us in exchange for our possessions. As we approached the house, we heard terrifying shootings coming from the ghetto. An action had started. It was fast, loud, full of terrible screams. 

People everywhere were running, and we too started to run as fast as we could. We reached the house where we hoped to be safe. We pushed our way inside and found ourselves standing in front of a man, his wife, and two small children. In a loud, angry voice, the man yelled: “What are you doing here? You must get out of here immediately.”

“We cannot leave. An action has started, and you promised to hide us,” pleaded my mother. “I have no hiding place. I want you out of here right now.” He started to push us out of the room as my mother continued to plead. “Have mercy on my children. The streets are full of Germans,” she sobbed, “and if we go out, we will be killed.”

The man’s wife demanded that we be thrown out immediately. In the ensuing commotion, my mother turned her head quickly and stared at me. Afraid to talk to me while she’s negotiating with him, my mother gives me a look with her eyes, a desperate look. Afraid to say one word, I look at my mother. Our eyes met. I read in her desperate look what she was telling me. “Now is the time. What I told you all the time, leave us. Run. Save yourself.”

I had the strength of running from death. I jumped, and I find myself on the roof. And when I fell down in that panic, I took a look, and I saw a hole. I knew, one way or the other, that’s where I have to go. And I pulled down the rest of the straw and some of the dirt, leaving only one little place. For what? To breathe. It doesn’t take more than maybe 20 minutes or a half hour, a German comes in, and he comes up to the attic. My nose was away from him maybe that much. I felt if I don’t breathe, he cannot know that there was somebody there, and he didn’t. He was there minutes only, and he leaves. 

I spent there the rest of the day. It’s dark, and I am exhausted, and I fall asleep. After the night, the morning comes. I hear somebody coming up to the attic. He comes up, and he says, “Who is here?” I came out, and he says, “You were here when the Germans were inspecting?” He had a heavy stick, and he had an axe, and I knew that I was in, in a very dangerous situation. I said, “Listen to me. I will go out, and they will spot me right away, and they will say, ‘Where were you hiding?’ I will say, ‘There was a nice man. He let me hide in his attic.’” He said, “But that’s a lie.” I said, “But they will not believe that it wasn’t like that.” I said, “Do me a favor. Let me stay here the day. I promise you, as soon as it gets dark, you can come up.” He said, “I will kill you if you stay another minute after it gets dark.”

After the night, I went down. The door was opened, and I came out. From that day on, I was on my own. By 1943, my mother, stepfather, and four-year-old sister had been murdered, along with nearly all the members of my extended family and the Jewish community of Skalat. At the age of 12, I was on my own in a totally hostile environment for the next two years. I survived by pretending to be a Ukrainian peasant girl, living a false life in a tiny village until liberation by the Soviet Army. In an orphanage, in a displaced persons camp, and often sleeping under the open sky, I made my way across Europe and sailed to New York, where I began my new life again as a Jew.

My message to you today is the following: I, Lusia Rosenzweig Milch, am 95-years-old and a Holocaust survivor. It is difficult to fully describe the suffering to which the Jews of my town, Skalat, were subjected. There, we were isolated, incarcerated, extorted, starved, and finally murdered. 

Out of almost 10,000, only 160 Jews survived. An ancient hatred, anti-Semitism, led to the murder of over 6 million Jews, including one and a half million children, the future of our people, gone forever. I ask you today to listen to eyewitnesses such as myself. Read, educate yourself, write to your representatives, and pledge never again. Never permit such a Holocaust to happen again. Do something before it is too late, or such events can happen again. 

The one thing I will not accept is to do nothing. With your help, we shall prevail.

Every Sunday of my childhood, my Papa came to our house bearing bagels, lox, and the Holocaust. His name was Nuchuum Lewin, born in 1922 in Łódź, Poland. He carried a large handkerchief to wipe his tears when he spoke about the past. He read the Encyclopedia Britannica cover to cover. He wrote letters to the editor of the Forward. He went to his Holocaust survivors’ group in Skokie every week. He used to say he never thought he would live to see another generation of Jews. We grandchildren were his naches, he told us. His treasures. His dividends.

He grew up in a home filled with music, laughter, borscht, gefilte fish, and potatoes. His parents, Fischel and Bluma, were hardworking people who were good and kind and full of love. He had a younger brother Max and a sister he recalled as the baby of the family, named Chana. He remembered his mother as a Yiddishe Mama, and said his parents “had to fight for a living,” which meant they were poor, but they were happy and always had enough to eat. He was the captain of his soccer team, Olympia, the only Jewish kid among his Polish peers, with a big crowd of Polish friends who had his back. Before the war, he could walk in any Polish neighborhood at any time of day or night. He had a girlfriend named Freda Shirlovich. He wanted to be a “Big Shot.”

He hadn’t a clue what was coming.

Together, he and Max built a lending library. They saved every coin. They bound some of the books by hand, inscribing them with their library’s name. For a small fee, friends and neighbors could borrow their collection of rare and foreign books from Russian, French, American, and Polish writers like Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Victor Hugo, and Upton Sinclair. Some of these books were now considered dangerous. All of them were beloved. Max dreamed of becoming a librarian. My Papa dreamed of money, influence, soccer stardom. But the library was something they built together, and it mattered to both of them more than anything else they owned.

In their separate Shoah Foundation testimonies, recorded fifty years later, each brother recalled their collection of books, naming some of the same titles and authors. It was the only subject that appeared in both testimonies. Max broke down crying when he remembered the library. My Papa laughed joylessly when the interviewer called the burned books cookbooks. The books had been burned in the same wood stove where their mother, Bluma, used to cook their meals.

When the Nazis invaded, their father Fischel burned the books one by one. He didn’t do it out of hatred. He did it out of love. Out of fear. Out of protection. Certain books were now contraband, books they had hand-bound and saved money for months to buy, and could be used against them to justify their torture or murder. Their library was gone, not by Nazi hands, but by their own.

Papa told us: first, they said not to buy from Jews. Then, they told us Jews should go back to Palestine. Then, Jews could not work. Then, Jews could not go to school. Then, Jews were forced into ghettos.

My Papa’s last day of work was September 1, 1939. Eight days later, the German soldiers reached Łódź. He went home after seeing the first occupiers in his city and cried for an entire day. He simply said, I lost my voice.

On September 8, 1939, his seventeenth birthday, he watched the SS raise their swastika flag in the center of his town, where everyone would have no choice but to see it flapping in the wind. His life as he knew it was over.

In the early days of the occupation, my Papa tried to help his family survive by taking over their milk delivery business. He would walk seventeen kilometers a day with two cans of milk across his shoulders, buying milk from German farmers near the border who risked their own lives to continue meeting him. But soon it became too dangerous to leave home. Soldiers were always waiting to grab someone off the street. Some people had already been sent to camps and had come back, reporting hard labor, bad food, humiliation, but they came back alive. No one knew that was about to change. If they had known, my Papa said, everyone would have run.

He begged his family to come with him. His mother Bluma wanted to go. She begged Fischel to make plans. But Max and his sister Chana were too young, and Fischel could not bring himself to leave. He always called it running away. But it was the bravest thing he ever did. Out of hundreds of family members, he was the only one who ran.

He left the Łódź ghetto on November 26, 1939, carrying a small bag with a few clothes, some money, a bar of soap, and a piece of bread. He took no souvenirs or photographs, nothing but the barest of necessities. Before he left, his father shook his hand and lost his voice. They hugged. His mother ran after him through the streets, crying, until he begged her to go back.

He took the train to Warsaw and stayed there in the Jewish community for a night or two, but kept heading north towards Bialystok. He made it to the demarcation line, the border between the German and Soviet zones, and waited there for months before being admitted into Russia. On his first day waiting in a long line of refugees, the bread packed in his bag got wet and mixed with the soap.

He was so hungry he ate it anyway.

In August of 1940 he was finally able to go across the line to the Soviet Union. He was eventually sent to a labor camp in Magnitogorsk, where he worked in a tool-and-die factory for the remainder of the war. He had no idea what had happened to his family.

Meanwhile, Max stayed behind. He was put to forced labor, whatever the Nazis required of a Jewish child who was useful enough to keep alive. At one point he was forced to work with Zyklon-B. Later, he worked on electrical wiring at a train station.

It was common for families being deported to call out the names of loved ones from inside the cattle cars as the trains passed through. Everyone who worked at the stations dreaded hearing their own name. One day, a train passed through the station where Max was working. He thought he heard his family screaming his name from inside the cattle cars. He thought he could see his mother, Bluma, reaching for him through the slats. His little sister Chana was only eight years old. His father Fischel, the man who had burned their books to protect them, was on that train. They were bound for Treblinka.

Far away in Magnitogorsk, while his family suffered under Nazi rule in the Łódź ghetto and then met their fate at the camps, my Papa met my grandmother Rachel, who had also fled east through Soviet territory with surviving members of her family. Somehow, a love story was born from a connection at the tool-and-die factory where my Papa worked as a laborer. She was introduced as an heiress from a good family by a mutual acquaintance who had known her family before the war. No one asked what was left to inherit. Nuchuum and Rachel were married during the war, with no chuppah, no celebration, just a civil ceremony. My Papa was in a hurry to build a family. He used to say he never thought he would live to see another generation of Jews, and he believed it was his duty to bring more Jews into the world.

When the war ended, they tried to go home. They went back to Poland. Their homes had been taken. Nobody wanted them. They had survived the unsurvivable only to be told, again, that they did not belong. The world had closed its doors.

For years after, my Papa would walk up to strangers and say, “My name is Nuchuum Lewin from Łódź. Do you know what happened to my family?”

One day someone answered him. Max had survived. But they were far from one another.

In 1947, he found his brother Max in Frankfurt am Main. He found the street and knocked on the right door. He recognized him immediately, he said, because “he looks just like me!”

Max was the one who told him what had happened. Their mother, Bluma. Their father, Fischel. Their little sister Chana. Sent to the gas chambers in 1942.

Before the war, they had been told to go back to Palestine. After the war, that was still the answer. Max married and eventually made his way to Chicago. My Papa and Rachel went to Israel with her family—her sister Selia, her brother Shmuel, and Selia’s young son, Dov. Rachel refused to give birth on German soil. When my mother was born, she was born in Israel, ha’Aretz. She lived there until she was nine years old. She has not been back since. I went for the first time this past December, 52-years-old, to celebrate Dov’s 92nd birthday with my Israeli family whom I had never met.

My Papa used to say, to know where you are going, you must know where you are coming from. He spent his life trying to forget what he had seen and lost, but he also spent his life making sure we knew. And when he was asked what he would tell his grandchildren, he said that they should remember they are Jews. That they are awake.

That was the advice he left for us. His grandchildren. His naches. His dividends.

They never rebuilt their library… but I’m building one in their name. Not with shelves and bindings. I am building it the only way I know how. Collecting the record, case by case, holding onto what is true, refusing to let it be flattened or rewritten or erased.

My Papa used to say, “Love is five minutes. Obligation is twenty-four hours.”

This is both.

My great-grandfather wrote it twice in the same letter. Once was not enough. He needed her to understand.

If the outcome is bad, you know what I will do.

It was August 1939. Vienna had been under Nazi rule for seventeen months. Viennese Jews had lost their businesses, their apartments, their credentials, their rights, and their ability to move freely through the city they had called home. My great-grandfather, Ignatz Pokart, was a Jewish man in his seventies, living in Vienna’s second district with his wife, Hermine. His daughter Mathilde had recently fled to England with her husband Karl. He was writing to tell her about the apartment they were being forced to leave, about having no income, about the court order requiring them to vacate by October 31.

And then, in the middle of an ordinary paragraph, he wrote that line. And then he wrote it again.

I read it the first time and kept going. I read it the second time and stopped.

I know what he meant. Many Jews in Vienna in 1939 made that choice when the walls closed in entirely. I do not know if he did. What I know is that he was telling his daughter, in the only language available to him, that he was running out of room. And Mathilde was in England, reading it, unable to go back, unable to bring him forward.

That letter sat in a box for eighty years before I read it.

In 1993, after my grandmother Mathilde’s death, my family cleared out her apartment in Rego Park, Queens. In the second drawer of her dresser, my mother found a reused Macy’s gift box with a red lid flecked with white speckles. She lifted the lid and closed it again. She knew what it was.

The box had been kept hidden for nearly fifty years. Inside were German passports stamped with the large red J and the Nazi eagle, tax clearance certificates required to leave Vienna, and letters written between 1939 and 1941 from the parents my grandparents left behind when they fled first to England and then to America. Those parents, Sigmund and Regine Reiser, Karl’s parents, and Ignatz and Hermine Pokart, Mathilde’s parents, were later deported and murdered. Sigmund and Regine were transported to Izbica and exterminated at Sobibor. Ignatz and Hermine were sent to Theresienstadt and then to Treblinka.

The letters were written in old German script. I could not read them. They sat in that Macy’s box for decades more while I raised a family and lived my life and carried the silence my grandmother had handed down without knowing its shape. It took a global pandemic, an Austrian woman named Roswitha, and months of painstaking translation to finally open them.

The first translation arrived in my inbox on an ordinary workday. I was sitting in my sunroom in Pennsylvania, alone at the computer. I saw the file name before I understood what it was. Something that looked more like a label than a message. I opened it immediately. I could not have waited.

The words were in English now. Roswitha’s English, careful and searching, carrying someone else’s meaning across two languages, two scripts, and nearly a century. She had deciphered the old German handwriting first, then found words for what it said. The voice was hers and his at the same time.

It was my great-grandfather, writing to his daughter Mathilde. He was worried about her work permit. About his rent. About his money. About whether he could hold on long enough for someone to save him. The tone was urgent and pressing and plainly desperate. And I sat there thinking about what it takes for a father to write a letter like that. To ask his child for help knowing she might not be able to give it, knowing the distance between them was not only miles, and send it anyway. Because he was her father and she was his daughter and what else do you do.

Something opened in me that I did not expect. Not grief exactly. Something closer to compassion, deep and unfamiliar, for a man I had never known, for a moment I was never supposed to see.

Once I read it, I could not unread it.

What those voices taught me changed how I see everything.

When people think about the Holocaust, they often go straight to the gas chambers. The letters taught me to go earlier.

The White Rose students understood this mechanism. That is why they named what they saw when most people were still telling themselves it was manageable. The letters showed me exactly what manageable looks like from inside a life that is being slowly unmade.

The letters are not dramatic documents. They are ordinary ones. Full of requests for stamps so a reply could come back. Updates on apartments that keep changing because Jews are being systematically forced from their homes. News about affidavits that have not been approved and consulates that do not answer. My grandmother’s wedding ring, listed on a Nazi emigration form and valued at six Reichsmarks. A birthday cake that cannot be baked because the family is scattered across three countries.

And underneath the ordinary details, a pressure that builds with every passing month.

In April 1939, Regine is still at her apartment on Glockengasse. She is looking for a new one she can afford. Fifth floor. No kitchen use. One room for thirty Reichsmarks, how can we pay for that? She signs the letter with kisses.

By July 1939, the letters have shifted. Everything is starting to depend on paper. Documents. Deadlines. Permissions. The word voluntarily appears in my great-grandfather’s letter about his business license. It does not read as a choice. It reads as pressure.

By August 1939, Sigmund and Regine have been forced from their home into collective Jewish housing, overcrowded dwellings vacated by families who had already been expelled or killed. Sigmund painted the room himself. He made it livable. Across the city my great-grandfather is leaving his apartment every day at five in the morning because he cannot bear to stay inside. The court has ordered them to move. He has no money. He writes to Mathilde about what he will do if the outcome is bad.

By July 1941, Regine writes a single line that I have read many times. Each time I stop at the same word.

No one comes to visit us. No one goes to poor people.

First they made them legally poor by taking the work, the business, the credentials, the right to earn. Then the financial poverty became social poverty. Because no one goes to poor people. Because poverty in that world, in that moment, also meant Jewish. And Jewish meant untouchable to enough people that the entire web of social connection disappeared.

By November 1941, the letters stop.

I have spent years carrying this story into rooms where people do not yet know they need to hear it. Schools. Synagogues. Holocaust remembrance events. A tent at WWII Weekend in Reading, Pennsylvania, where I speak for an hour and then stand behind a table for seven more.

On the table is a trifold display. On the left, life for Karl and Mathilde in Vienna before everything ruptured. Photographs. Ordinary life. The city they called home. In the middle, the names of family members printed on cattle cars, each one leading to a different camp. Sobibor. Treblinka. Theresienstadt. On the right, where Karl and Mathilde landed, and the many countries Jews fled to when they could, because refuge was never guaranteed and most doors were closed. Alongside those images, three numbers. The Jewish population of Vienna in 1932: 200,000. In 1939: 166,000. In 1942: 800.

I do not have to explain those numbers. People stand in front of them and do the math themselves.

Some lean in close to the documents. Some pause at the photographs longer than they expected to. Some move quickly past the transport lists as if speed itself might soften what happened there. Most do the math in silence.

I stay. I say the names.

Because the pattern the letters taught me to recognize did not end in 1945. I know this now in a way I cannot unknow.

In the years since October 7, 2023, I have watched a pattern accelerate that was already present before that morning. I watched anti-Semitism rise openly on college campuses and in the streets. I watched Jewish students barricade themselves inside a library while protesters surrounded the building, banging on doors and windows. I watched a car rammed through the entrance of a Jewish preschool. No one was hurt that time. Just. I watched people gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. Jews attacked at Bondi Beach in Australia. Jewish entertainers banned. Jewish students told they do not belong. Synagogues vandalized. Homes marked. Communities shaken.

Just. Just. Just.

That word frightens me. Not because these moments are identical to the past. They are not. History does not repeat itself so neatly. What frightens me is how quickly people adjust to things that should remain shocking.

A smashed window becomes a brief headline. A threat becomes an argument about politics. A swastika becomes something people debate instead of recoil from. And after a while, exhaustion settles in. People stop reacting with the same urgency because urgency is hard to sustain.

The letters taught me that this kind of normalization has a history of its own.

And then it arrived in the neighborhood where my grandmother had lived, where the box had been found, where this story began.

In May 2026, I was scrolling through social media when I saw it. The Rego Park Jewish Center. Swastikas. The word Hitler spray painted on the facade. It happened overnight, at 1:15 in the morning, while the neighborhood slept. When rabbis and congregants arrived to pray, this is what they found.

My stomach dropped in a way that was different from the other incidents. Different because I know that building. My grandparents lived in Rego Park. The apartment where we found the box was there. After Karl died, Mathilde walked to the Rego Park Jewish Center regularly. It was where she went. Her community. Her refuge after his death.

I have a Siddur, a Jewish prayer book published in America in 1932, that came from their world. Inside it is a Yizkor booklet, stamped Rego Park Jewish Center. Yizkor is the Jewish memorial prayer when the living stop and say the names of those they have lost. Not as history. As presence.

Karl and Mathilde sat in that building and spoke the names of Sigmund and Regine, of my great-grandparents Ignatz and Hermine, the man who signed his letters Tatilischko and the woman who never wrote a single letter herself but was always present, a line of kisses added in her husband’s handwriting. That building was where they kept faith with the dead. Mathilde came back to it week after week after Karl was gone because that building held something she needed to keep going.

And now someone came in the night and spray painted what they fled directly onto the building where their neighbors went to pray. Where they went to say the names of the dead. Where she went to find her footing after losing him.

We know this. The grandchildren of survivors know this in our bones, though we did not all inherit the same story. Some of us have letters. Some of us have photographs. Some of us have nothing at all because everything was taken, including the people who could have told us. Some of us grew up in homes where the past was spoken carefully and some of us grew up in homes where it was never spoken at all. But we share something that does not depend on what survived or what was lost.

We recognize the signs.

We see the parallels. We feel the urgency in a way that is hard to explain to people who do not carry this history, because we are not only watching the news. We are watching something we were warned about, something we were handed without being told we were being handed it, something that lives in us now as vigilance and grief and rage and fear, all at the same time, even as we are also trying to live our lives, raise our families, find the ordinary joys of an ordinary day.

We are not absorbing this like weather. We are screaming. We have been screaming.

And what we want people to understand is not only the Holocaust. It is the Jews. As a people. From ancient times until now, through every expulsion and pogrom and genocide and period of relative peace, we have never stopped being a people. The Holocaust did not create Jewish identity and the end of the Holocaust did not resolve the question of Jewish safety. We are still here. We are still a people. And what is happening now is not new. It is the oldest story wearing a new coat.

Holocaust education is not enough if it begins at the gas chambers and ends at liberation. It has to begin earlier.

By then, almost every moral failure has already happened.

It has to begin earlier, with ordinary life. With apartments and wedding rings and fathers writing worried letters to daughters. With the slow narrowing of what is permitted, tolerated, spoken aloud. The question is whether people are willing to recognize those moments while they are still unfolding, instead of only afterward.

The White Rose students knew what they were seeing. They saw it early and they named it clearly and they refused to look away. That refusal cost them everything.

I think about them when I stand at that table. When I show an audience the photograph of my grandfather Karl holding his refugee number at Kitchener Camp. He is 34 years old in that photograph. He is looking directly at the camera. Not away. Directly at it.

I think often now about what it means to inherit a history like this. Not only the grief of it, but the responsibility.

Jewish friends have begun asking questions I recognize, quietly and seriously. How do we know when it is serious enough. How do we know when it is time to go.

Grandma. Grandpa. How did you know when it was time to go?

They never told us. Not one word of any of it, not to my mother, not to me, not to anyone we knew. I grew up inside that silence without knowing its shape. I only knew the questions I was not supposed to ask.

I understand more now than I once did. Some experiences are so heavy they change the structure of a family without anyone naming them out loud. My grandparents folded the past away carefully, almost completely. But the letters survived anyway. The names survived anyway. And now I am the one keeping them.

I am a third-generation witness. And witness is not passive. It is a choice made again every day, to look directly at what is in front of you and say its name out loud.

The letters taught me how these things begin. Not with gas chambers. Not all at once. With my grandmother’s wedding ring listed on a Nazi emigration form and valued at six Reichsmarks. With an old man leaving his apartment every day at five in the morning because he cannot bear to stay inside.

With a line written twice in the same letter.

If the outcome is bad, you know what I will do.

I read those words now with the knowledge of everything that came after them. And sometimes that distance of eighty years does not feel very distant at all.

Regine. Sigmund. Tatilischko. Hermine.

Zichronam l’vracha. May their memory be a blessing.

It didn’t end.

Speech delivered next to the “Hate Ends Now” cattle car exhibit at the University of North Texas library mall, April 20, 2026.

Ladies and Gentlemen, UNT Students, Faculty, Parents, and Colleagues,

My name is Timothy L. Jackson, Ph.D., and I am Professor of Music Theory at the College of Music and Distinguished University Research Professor here at the University of North Texas. I teach courses on music theory and the politics of classical music, and have actively directed the “Lost Composers” Project, which seeks to revive the music and theoretical work of composers eclipsed or lost because of Nazi-era cultural policies and the Holocaust.

I am alive to speak to you today solely because all four of my grandparents were Jews who “saw the writing on the wall” and had the good sense to flee from Europe prior to the Holocaust.

My maternal grandmother (my mother’s mother), Rose Bluhmstein Sherman, came to the U.S. by herself in 1920—an astonishingly bold move for a single 21-year-old girl (Plate 1). Her family, the Bluhmsteins, were originally German-Jewish diamond merchants who settled in Berlin; however, my grandmother’s father emigrated from Germany to Poland around 1900 and established a coal business in the small town of Pabjanice (now spelled Pabianice), about a hundred miles southwest of Łódź.

The Bluhmsteins became middle-class Polish-Jewish petit bourgeois (Plates 3–5).

Ironically, before the rise of Nazism, when my grandma came to the U.S. in 1920, she preferred to associate with Germans since she spoke their language (in addition to Polish, Yiddish, and some Russian). Her two uncles, who had remained in Germany, had both fought in the German army in World War I.

In the later 1920s, my grandmother trusted a German family to look after my mother while she was working (my mother was born in 1924), and, much later, my mother’s closest friends were either Jewish or German, or both! My interest in studying German language and culture stemmed in part from my grandmother.

Anti-Semitism motivated the most momentous events in my family history. In addition to my maternal grandmother leaving Poland, my paternal grandfather, Yakov Zelechin, known as “Jack Zelechin,” changed his surname in London to “Jack Jackson” in 1936. Why? Because, at that time, it was dangerous, even in comparatively tolerant England, to be identified as Jewish by one’s surname. He wanted to fly under the radar, and thereby give his sons, particularly his youngest son (my father), a better chance in life. My grandfather, Jack (Yakov), to whom I was especially close in my childhood, had emigrated to England as a teenager just before World War I and the Russian Revolution, the son of a master carpenter in Mogilev, White Russia (Plates 7–8). When his father was murdered in a pogrom just before World War I, my great-grandmother Mariashe fled to England with her two children, my grandfather and his sister.

My grandfather’s name change from Yakov (Jack) Zelechin to Jack Jackson in 1936 was a momentous, life-changing event. Again, in 1936, with the rise of Hitler and the accompanying global anti-Semitism, even in Britain, it was bad to be identified as Jewish, or perceived as being “too Jewish.” Recall that 1936 was the period of the rise of Mosley and the Blackshirts in England, the British equivalent to the Nazis, and prejudice and anti-Semitism were ubiquitous. My uncles used to come home bleeding and bruised from street fights against the British fascists. Also, my father Anthony was in “grammar school” at the time, which was the sine qua non for a university or professional school education and subsequent career.

One night, on October 14, 1936, my father told me, as an 11-year-old, he went to bed as Anthony Zelechin, and the next morning he woke up Anthony Jackson (Plate 9). We often talked about his experiences growing up Jewish in England in the 1930s. At one point, he also drew a parallel with the famous movie Chariots of Fire, which afforded an inside look at the kind of genteel British anti-Semitism that permeated elite educational institutions, government, and upper-class society; the anti-Semitism that forced my grandfather to change his surname, and, thereby, his public identity, in order to help my father to attend the London Polytechnic, the equivalent of university, to study architecture (Plate 10).

But let us now return to my mother’s side of the family—those who remained in Poland and France. Of them, only one brother and two children survived in France. The rest of my large extended family were all murdered in various ways in Pabjanice or deported from France in cattle cars to the death camps. During the Nazi occupation of France in 1940, the Bluhmsteins were caught in the Nazi net in occupied Paris. A friendly woman from across the street—a Righteous Gentile—hid and fed them beneath the floor in the barn of her cottage in the countryside for almost three years (Plates 11–12). The family went crazy hiding in that dark, dank barn with nothing to do but remain quiet, accompanied only by constant, intense hunger, cold, and heat—and fear. One day, the father could not stand being cooped up anymore under these dire circumstances, and so he went out, was caught, and deported by cattle car to Auschwitz, where he was murdered. By doing some research in the archives of Yad Vashem—at the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem—I found copies of records documenting the deportation of three of my mother’s uncles from France in cattle cars just like the one now on display here.

After the war, my grandmother traveled back to Europe to search for her family. Three of her brothers in Paris—and their wives and children—had been hidden, discovered, and deported on the cattle cars to the death camps; just one single brother, also hidden, had miraculously survived. Then, when she traveled back to Poland to look for the rest of her family, she found no one left. Eventually, she learned the truth. The author Rochl Auerbakh, who survived the war years in Poland, reported the following about the Jews of Pabjanice in her “Ghetto Diary”:

29 May 1942. Lately we have heard from Pabianice and from its neighboring towns that the “liquidation” of the Jewish population there was carried out in such a way, that the children up to age ten and the elderly over age sixty were killed by shooting. Those in the intermediate age groups were forced to go through a selection. Those who were capable of work were taken for work, and the incapable—the weak—were taken out behind the city and murdered by machinegun fire near open pits.

6 June 1942. Yesterday, I was told how the children under age ten were murdered in Pabianice. I could not understand how the mothers allowed their children to be taken away from them, how they allowed them to be torn from their sides without sharing the fate of their children. But apparently the hangmen made their job of slaughtering the children easier by taking all the women out to work at dawn on that day. In their absence, they took the children away, outside the city. At the same time, they spread a rumor in the city that they were being taken to Warsaw. They say that most of the mothers who survived lost their minds…. (Plate 13)

Another survivor, who, like my grandmother, returned to Pabjanice after the war looking for his family, described his feelings, which are similar to those of my grandmother: 

Lonely with my own thoughts, I walked the Jewish streets of my hometown. Memories of my childhood forced themselves to the surface. Every house told a story. Every street had its own tale to tell: this is where my cheder [elementary school] was, we played here, later I worked in these buildings. Here we spun dreams for a better future. In this garden, we had many discussions, read books. When the Germans occupied the city, the first thing they did was to hang a big sign on the garden that read: “Entry forbidden to Jews and dogs.” The sign was no longer there—but the Jews weren’t there either. Empty. Everything was empty. I ran back to the Jewish streets. Every building, every wall spoke to me: This is where the Ghetto was. This is where they died of starvation and here on Warszawska Street the Jews of Pabianice walked their last road…. I left my hometown in sorrow and in pain—never to return.

Let us turn back the clock. In 1920, as I related, my remarkable grandmother Rose said goodbye to her mother, father, and six brothers in Pabjanice, and left for America by herself. She went to the American embassy in Warsaw, picked up her papers (which I still have), took the train to Bremerhaven in northern Germany, and got on the boat as steerage (Plate 16).

For a single Jewish girl at age 21 to go to America all by herself was a huge leap into the unknown. Luckily for her, she was able to emigrate in 1920, just before the eugenicists in America slammed the doors to Jewish immigrants from Central Europe in 1924, regarding them as “undesirables” not to be admitted to an increasingly xenophobic “white” America.

To this day, I clearly recall asking, “Grandma, why did you take that extraordinary step? Why did you leave on your own?” She replied that she wanted to be free—that she could not stand the anti-Semitism in Poland, and in Europe generally, another minute. In Pabjanice, walking down the street, she had been repeatedly pushed into the gutter as “a dirty Jew” and she could not wait to leave. As a result of fleeing from Poland, she never saw her parents again.

I was born in Canada, in the shadow of the Holocaust, in 1958. When I was three-years-old, I suddenly acquired a “foster sister” my age. My parents took her in, even though they were not financially secure at this point. Again, there was a connection with the Holocaust because my foster sister’s mother had been a human Guinea pig used for medical experiments in the camps. The Nazi doctors had taken bone grafts from her leg so that she became lame; the physical and mental agonies of my foster sister’s mother, who had been subjected to these “medical” tortures, were so severe that she could not look after her daughter properly; unfortunately, this little girl also suffered from her mother’s trauma.

When I was about six-years-old, my mother told me bluntly that I must live life to the fullest, that I must fulfill my God-given potential through an absolute devotion to self-development through education—and that I must make something of myself. My life would never be my own to waste because I had the obligation to live for the 1.5 million children—including my immediate relatives—who had been murdered in the Holocaust, those Jewish children who never had the chance to mature and contribute to the world—not to mention enjoy the many privileges and opportunities that I did.

For my family, racism was never an abstract concept, but a matter of life and death. My grandmother, although she remained a humble, poor, working-class woman her entire life, used to send me her carefully saved-up money for every birthday and Jewish holiday money which was duly put away into my college fund so that one day I could acquire the education that she never had. Her money, invested in Israel bonds, would help finance my undergraduate and graduate education. Having spent years in universities and conservatories earning the credentials to become “a distinguished university research professor” and a tenured full professor of music theory at UNT, I cannot tolerate anti-Semitism.

Every three generations, people lose a direct connection with the past. My son and daughter can understand the past intellectually but not viscerally and emotionally the way I do because of my conversations with my parents and grandparents. Alarmingly, I am now seeing that some of the same elements—political tribalization, economic uncertainty, defeatism, nihilism, social media algorithms that create echo chambers—are combining to form the dangerous preconditions for an analogous catastrophe.

It is my hope that, through good-faith debate, critical thinking, and basic respect for each other’s humanity, we can heed the warnings of history and ensure that nothing like the Holocaust can ever happen again.

To conclude, for me and my family,there is a direct, personal, and documented connection between the Holocaust and Israel. How did the few survivors in my family react to the Holocaust? In memory of our lost family members, we funded and built the Bluhmstein Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel ha-Shomer, namely the Bluhmstein Institute for Oral, Dental, and Jaw Medicine (Plates 17–18). In the best Jewish philanthropic tradition, this hospital is a humanistic endeavor, employing both Israeli Jewish and Arab medical staff to heal all patients, regardless of their ethnicity or faith.

Thank you for your time.

On a recent trip through the Lower East Side of Manhattan—the intersection of Delancey and Essex Streets—I was momentarily struck by a distant memory dating back to when I was just 14-years-old. My grandparents on my mother’s side had come to New York on an extended visit from their home in Israel. Although they had never been to New York before, the trip was not a typical family get-together, let alone a sight-seeing tour. This visit had a purpose. We were walking down Essex Street in search of a Polish typewriter. It was on that very corner that my grandfather, Ignacy Chiger, suddenly stopped, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and began to cry. In his words… he was home.

The push carts, the street vendors, the endless parade of Chasidic men and boys, the hustle and bustle of transplanted Jewish life, had suddenly struck a deep cord. My grandfather simply could not restrain himself. 

Before the war, Ignacy was a businessman in Lwów, disciplined and deliberate, proud of the life he had built in a city once bursting with a vibrant Jewish life. Jewish Lwów pulsed with Torah learning, argument, enterprise, and culture. It was a European Jewish world with deep roots and a rich history. 

In that very moment… on that very corner in New York City… Ignacy’s pre-war world had come full circle. 

Sitting for hours at a time at our dining room table in our modest home in Forest Hills, Queens, Ignacy poured out his darkest memories, day after day, through the keys of that Polish typewriter. After what seemed like an eternity, Ignacy had completed his unpublished memoir, titled, Świat w Mroku (“A World in Darkness”).

Ignacy’s world did not go dark all at once. It was dismantled in stages. 

On September 17, 1939, the Red Army entered Lwów under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the agreement between Hitler and Stalin that carved Poland in two. That day was Yom Kippur. Soviet soldiers arrived as “unwanted guests” invoking liberation, equality, and progress. But what followed was something else.

Overnight, my grandfather lost his business, and his home. What had been his became the state’s. Strangers were moved into the family apartment. Privacy became impossible. Trust dissolved, and tensions between the flatmates escalated. 

The language of the Soviets sounded utopian, but the atmosphere on the ground told a different story. The grip of communism quickly took a stranglehold on the populus. So, Ignacy adapted, watched, and calculated.

A Soviet NKDV commander, Comrade Yakov Grona, began to recognize Ignacy as “useful,” and fashioned him with the moniker “foreman,” to which he lived up.

Then in June of 1941, Germany broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and invaded the Soviet Union. The Red Army retreated east. The Germans entered Lwów. The Ukrainians, craving blood, mercilessly took revenge on the retreating Soviets. There was no shortage of bloodlust for the Jews. 

Beatings, humiliation, and murder in the streets became the new normal within the confines of  the newly formed Lwów Ghetto. Visible deportations followed. Concealment served no purpose. The Ghetto was now a corridor towards death.

It was within those walls that Ignacy was recognized as “useful” yet again. This time by the most feared SS commandant in lesser Poland, Hauptscharführer Josef Grzimek, earning a new moniker—“engineer.” 

He would organize and complete impossible tasks, build elaborate hiding spots, cheat death almost daily, all while saving his family, and many others. 

With each Aktion, the population shrank. Deportations led to Janowska and other camps. Others were taken to Piaski, the sand pits, where thousands were executed. Before the war, approximately 150,000 Jews lived in Lwów. By May of 1943, only a fraction remained. The Ghetto had become the Julag.

On May 30, 1943, the final liquidation of the Lwów Julag began. The remaining illusion of survival within the system disappeared.

The decision my grandfather made next defied conventional logic. He chose to lead his family into the sewers of Lwów. This was not as an act of desperation, but as an act of design.

As a young teen, Ignacy sat on a hilltop overlooking the construction of the Poltva, Lwów’s underground sewer system, built by Italian prisoners from WWI. Little did he know how “useful” that memory would be. He calculated gradients and distances based on his knowledge of Lwów’s layout. 

Together with two other men, he chose to dig through the basement of the closest barracks toward the Poltva River vaulting.

This was not an escape from prison. It was an entry into one. A prison without bars.

The concrete vaulting had to be broken open. Too shallow and they would miss the structure. Too deep and they risked flooding or collapse. A miscalculation would not delay the plan. It would end it.

After 10 days, they broke through… exactly as Ignacy had calculated.

And then they entered… into complete and horrifying darkness. It was in that darkness that they encountered their guardian angel, Leopold Socha.

Ignacy descended with his wife Paulina, with seven-year-old Krystyna, my mother, and with three-year-old Paweł, my uncle.

Krystyna understood danger. Paweł understood fear.

Imagine telling a three-year-old he must not cry when rats crawl across his body. Imagine asking a seven-year-old to suppress a scream when footsteps echo above. Imagine a mother covering her child’s mouth so breath does not become sound. In the sewer, silence was survival.

The sewers of Lwów were not empty spaces. They were narrow, wet, and hostile to human life. Adults could not stand upright. Water and waste moved constantly through the channels. The air was thick. Light did not exist. Day dissolved into night.

Nearly seventy Jews frantically entered that underground network through manholes  in the chaos during the ghetto’s final liquidation. Socha and Chiger had to make a decision.  

There was only money for twenty.  

After fourteen months of disease, flooding, fire, psychological collapse, and the constant threat of discovery, only ten would emerge. 

And yet, somehow, even there… human structure persisted.

Not only did my grandfather organize the group’s survival, but he maintained a fragile sense of order and humanity in a place designed to erase it.

Among the 10 was a pregnant woman. And, in the sewer, a child was born. Ignacy was the midwife. The child did not survive. The mother made sure of that… for the baby’s cries would have endangered the entire group. 

The sewer became both a womb and a grave.

And then there was their savior, Leopold Socha—a Polish sewer worker, a devout Catholic, and a petty thief who spent most of his life in and out of prison. 

At first, he helped for money. Ignacy had cleverly struck a deal during their first encounter. But eventually the money ran out. That’s when the angel emerged from the darkness. 

Socha made his choice… to continue without pay. He saw Ignacy and his family’s survival as his salvation.

At some point, the transaction became something else.

He descended into the sewers again and again, bringing bread, potatoes, and news from the world above. If discovered, he would have been executed immediately. In occupied Poland, aiding Jews was punishable by death. 

Not declared. Not announced. Demonstrated through action. A redemption for a life of crime.

In the language of history, he would later be recognized in Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. But, in the moment, he was simply a man making a decision, repeatedly, under risk.

Socha had led the group to a safer, dryer, and less hospitable corner of the sewer, referred to by my grandmother, as the “Palace.” Soon a routine had unfolded. Ignacy wrote plays for the group to perform. Comedy in the sewer maintained some shred of humanity. 

During this past Pesach, my mother, now 90, revealed something astonishing. The fragile group celebrated Passover in the sewer… with matzah, proudly provided by their savior.  

Above ground, the city continued its descent. Below, a fragile form of life persisted.

On July 27, 1944, as the Soviet army advanced and German forces retreated, the moment of emergence came.

After 14 months underground, Leopold Socha led the survivors out… deciding the order in which they would emerge. Ignacy—the “Superintendent” or the “Captain,” as Socha referred to him—was last.   

The sunlight was so blinding and the space so unfamiliar that my four-year-old uncle, Paweł, cried out to return to the only life he knew—the sewer. 

Thirty years later, my grandfather, the bravest man I had ever known, finally summoned the courage to begin to reconstruct what had happened. He wrote from memory. Not from notes. Not from records. From memory.

Six months later, in 1975, at age 69, Ignacy suddenly passed.

Ignacy never got a chance to see his story resonate with the world. He had written his memoir in careful and deliberate detail. It was not composed as literature. It was testimony. A reconstruction of events that demanded precision because they had once determined whether his children would live or die. The memoir was not intended as nostalgia for his family, but for the world to understand the human capacity for evil, as well as bravery, and what the world could look like if we did not recognize the signs.

My mother, Krystyna Chiger Keren, used the memoir as the cornerstone for her best-seller, The Girl in the Green Sweater, which inspired the 2011 Academy Award nominated film, In Darkness.

The memoir was eventually published in Poland in 2011, under its original title, Świat w Mroku. In 2026, it finally appears in English as Beneath the Lightless Sky.

The memoir does not ask for sympathy. It demands attention.

And it exists alongside another story… in another city. 

At the very moment my grandfather was descending into the sewers of Lwów to preserve life, a small group of students in Munich were choosing a different form of resistance above ground. The White Rose, led by siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl, stood at the center of a quiet but defiant moral uprising. Most were in their twenties, students and young soldiers who refused to accept the world as it had become. Alongside them were Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, and their mentor, Kurt Huber.

Beginning in mid-1942, they wrote and distributed a series of six leaflets that exposed Nazi crimes and called on ordinary Germans to resist. They gathered names from the Munich telephone book and mailed their message across the country. The leaflets spoke of mass murder and urged resistance. They asked readers not only to understand, but to act, to duplicate, and to distribute.

The name they chose, Weiße Rose, the “White Rose,” a symbol of spiritual love, stood for moral clarity in a time of distortion.

On February 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl were caught placing leaflets in the University of Munich. They were arrested by the Gestapo, tried, and executed by guillotine four days later. Their fellow members were also executed.

Yet their final leaflet survived them. It was smuggled to London, reproduced, and dropped over Germany by Allied aircraft.

Their voices continued.

Their resistance and my grandfather’s survival unfolded at the same time. Different methods. Different conditions. The same refusal to surrender humanity.

Ignacy preserved life. The White Rose confronted silence. Socha chose to help.

These are not separate stories. They are variations of the same question: what does a human being do when pressed into impossible corners?

The memoir does not answer this in theory. It shows it in action.

Choice remains. Even when options are reduced. Even when risk is constant. Even when outcomes are uncertain.

This is why Beneath the Lightless Sky and the White Rose matter.

Not only as history, but as a framework for thinking… and what follows from it.

“We did not come as witnesses.”

On Yom ha-Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, we pause not only to mourn the six million Jews who were murdered, but to confront the enduring responsibility their memory demands of us. We are called not only to remember how they died, but how they lived, and to carry their stories forward with clarity, courage, and purpose.

This past summer, I traveled to Poland with 30 Jewish mothers through NCSY TJJ for Moms. We did not go as tourists. We went as witnesses.

At a time when global anti-Semitism is once again rising, the echoes of history no longer feel distant. In Poland, they were immediate, palpable, unrelenting, and impossible to ignore.

Our journey was not simply a visit to historical landmarks. It was an act of remembrance, a confrontation with truth, and a commitment to ensuring that the stories of our people are never forgotten.

We walked through once-vibrant Jewish quarters, stood in centuries-old synagogues, and wandered through cemeteries that whisper the names of generations. There was beauty there, evidence of a rich, creative, deeply rooted Jewish life that existed long before it was nearly extinguished. A reminder that Jewish history is not defined solely by tragedy, but by resilience, culture, and enduring spirit.

And then, we arrived at Auschwitz and Birkenau.

No book, photograph, or classroom lesson can prepare you for the weight of that place. Walking beneath the words “Arbeit macht frei,” seeing piles of shoes, suitcases, and the remnants of human lives dissolves any illusion of distance. These were not numbers. They were mothers, fathers, and children. They were families. They were ours.

As mothers, we experienced this in a uniquely profound way. We saw our own children reflected in the unimaginable stories of those who perished. The grief was overwhelming, but so, too, was the clarity that emerged from it.

We would remember. We would speak. We would not allow silence to prevail.

One of the most powerful moments of our journey took place in Kraków’s Plac Bohaterów Getta, Ghetto Heroes Square, where 70 empty chairs stand as a haunting symbol of lives uprooted. As the sun set, we lit candles and stood together in quiet reflection. Then, softly at first, we began to sing “Ha-Tikvah.”

In that moment, surrounded by absence, we chose presence. We chose hope. We chose life.

Throughout the journey, we formed deep bonds, grounded in shared memory and purpose. We came to understand that we are not simply observers of history, we are its continuation. As mothers, daughters, and granddaughters, we are part of an unbroken chain of Jewish continuity.

The responsibility to remember does not belong to history books alone. It belongs to us, in how we speak, what we teach, and what we refuse to ignore.

I returned home changed. More connected to my identity. More aware of my responsibility. More committed to ensuring that these stories endure.

Because I saw, firsthand, what happens when the world looks away. When hatred is dismissed. When silence prevails.

And there, among the stones of silence, I made a vow, not only to remember, but to carry something of this place with me.

I brought back stones.

Not as souvenirs, but as witnesses. As weight and as proof. They now sit in our homes, small, unassuming, and impossibly heavy reminders of what was lost, and what we are now responsible to carry forward.

Because memory is not something we visit.

It is something we carry.