![]() ![]() We can use technology to make the stories of survivors vivid for generations to come. Education programs like Lappin Foundation’s Holocaust Symposium are teaching students, teachers and community leaders about the dangers of antisemitism, discrimination, dehumanization and hatred. Massachusetts’ Genocide Education Act, which requires Massachusetts school districts to incorporate genocide education in both middle and high school, is a good start. We can keep telling their stories through Holocaust education. How will the perpetual cycle of antisemitism end? And when the Holocaust survivors are gone, how can we honor their legacy? In 2023, we cannot claim ignorance or a lack of information. We can’t ignore well-documented warnings like the recently released Anti-Defamation League statistics that show antisemitic incidents in Massachusetts went up 41%, making ours the sixth worst state in the country for hate crimes. We can’t turn a deaf ear to demonstrators chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” We can’t simply delete tweets from politicians who write antisemitic tropes on Twitter and in speeches. These kinds of moments are happening now, here in Boston, in our Massachusetts cities and towns, across the country, and around the globe. Instead, the Holocaust occurred on the back of countless incidents of antisemitic hate, during which people looked the other way or stayed silent when they could have spoken out. How could people have stood by while their neighbors were filed into cattle cars and sent to their deaths? The answer is that it didn’t happen all at once. On days like Yom HaShoah, many wonder how the Holocaust could have happened. Students carelessly carve swastikas into desks and anti-vax protesters refer to themselves as victims of persecution, while wearing yellow stars like those used to identify Jews during the Holocaust. In the Netherlands, home of Holocaust victim Anne Frank, a survey found 23% of Dutch youth believe the Holocaust is a myth, or that the number of Jews killed has been greatly exaggerated. This loss is magnified by the rise of Holocaust denialism, despite the fact that the Holocaust is the most well-documented genocide in history. Most of the 80,000 Holocaust survivors living in the United States are more than 85 years old and that number is predicted to drop to 15,800 by 2030. The average age of the more than 160,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel is 85.5, and between 20, an average of 42 were dying every day. Yet there will soon be a time when there are no survivors left. The terrifying details of their experiences evoke emotion in all who hear their stories and give credibility to the historical record of that devastating period. Holocaust survivors like Gruenbaum are powerful reminders of the atrocities of genocide and the gaping hole left by each of its 6 million Jewish victims. When he passed away last month at the age of 92, his remarkable survival story - which included his mother sewing teddy bears for Nazi officers to keep him out of Auschwitz - went with him. Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which makes us think of Holocaust survivors like Massachusetts’ own Michael Gruenbaum. ![]() (Angela Rowlings/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images) Facebook Email Sophie Einstein examines a rock left at the Boston Holocaust Memorial during the 2016 community Holocaust commemoration of Yom Hashoah. ![]()
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