Holocaust Education Week Begins With Talk

To begin Holocaust Education Week, 20 members of the Boston University community gathered in the George Sherman Union last night to hear the stories of several BU and Boston-area students who are among the third generation of Holocaust survivors.

The event was the brainchild of organizers who recognized the fact that there are few Holocaust survivors living today. Members of the Holocaust Education Committee wanted to use the event to tell their stories to others.

CAS sophomore Hillary Lausman attended the event because she herself is a third generation survivor, and said she thought it might be interesting to see “how other people view the same events that happened.”

While all of the third-generation panelists had different views of what being the grandchildren of survivors means to them, all expressed a responsibility to tell their children and others about the Holocaust.

“It’s not necessarily a mission … In general, people have a responsibility to carry on family stories; here, the story is different, but the responsibility is not,” said panelist Ilana Apelker, a Brandeis University senior.

Moderator Dr. Bernice Lerner, of the Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character at the School of Education, is the child of holocaust survivors and prefaced the panel with several overarching statements about perceptions of the Holocaust.

“No one can know what the Holocaust was like unless they were there,” Lerner said. “There are as many ways of surviving as there are survivors … The experience did different things to each person.”

Lerner also told the audience that survivors “die twice: the first time when they physically die, the second time is when everyone who knows them dies.”

The panelists spoke of their relationships with their survivor grandparents and what affect the experiences of the elder generation has on them today.

All four of panelist Tracy Fogel’s grandparents are survivors.

“I always felt special, even among other Jews … because all four of my grandparents survived,” said the CAS sophomore. “The Holocaust is always something I’ve been interested in [and] I’ve always been close to my grandparents.”

Apelker spoke of the close bond she shared with her grandfather, who gave her the ring of his sister, a Holocaust victim, and set aside his yellow star for her to have after he passed away.

CAS senior Marla Zeiderman, president of HEC, said while her grandparents do not want to talk about their life then, she has learned they survived as tailors, “doing little jobs for officials.”

“[Being a survivor] colors my view of a lot of things … I see both the good and bad of humanity; I try to bring about more of the good,” Zeiderman said.

Panelists stressed the importance of Holocaust education, saying one does not need to have a personal connection to the genocide to teach about it.

Apelker cited HEC leader Jina Moore, a non-Jew, as the perfect example of someone who “is so willing to learn” about the story of others to carry forth their message.

The forum, entitled “The Third Generation — What’s That?” is part of a series of events for Holocaust Education Week, which typically takes place before Passover.

Rabbi Ben Lanckton, director of Student Activities at Hillel, said the week is meant, in part, to “tell stories of captivity, before the liberation” that Passover celebrates.

Moore, a senior in the University Professors program, said the Committee’s mission is to not only “promote awareness, but to talk about things that aren’t talked about,” including the reality of living as a child or grandchild of a Holocaust survivor.

Zeiderman said the week had a global resonance.

“We take into account what’s gone on in the world until this point, like the Armenian … and the Rwandan genocides,” Zeiderman said. “They always say don’t let it happen … and it kind of does happen again; we are here to learn what we can do to prevent it.”