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My great-great-grandfather, who survived Auschwitz, found a 5-year-old boy whose family had been tortured by Doctor Mengele, the doctor of death, and killed by Nazis.

He took the boy, Peter, home and essentially adopted him. My great-great-grandfather was unexpectedly killed just a few months later at his work by a Russian soldier, leaving my great-grandmother to raise Peter as her own after returning from war.

Holocaust Remembrance Day strikes a personal note due to my family’s Jewish history being woven into the fabric of this atrocity.

Every year on Jan. 27, we commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It signifies the anniversary of the liberation from Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp. We honor those who survived, renew a commitment to justice and human freedom and remember the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis along with all others who perished.

It’s been 80 years since the Holocaust ended, and as time goes on, it’s of the utmost importance that we continue to dedicate our time to education about the Jewish plight and never forget the horrors of the Holocaust.

Syracuse University’s undergraduate population is 17% Jewish. Providing proper resources and a strong sense of community on campus alleviates the lingering effects of the Holocaust that alienate Jews today. Our history shapes who we are, and being informed about this monumental brutality also aids our students in processing it.

“My great-grandmother escaped imminent death as a child at a concentration camp. I felt compelled to spread awareness on International Holocaust Remembrance Day,” Gavi Sela, the event’s chair at Chabad SU, said.

Despite the commemorations by myself and fellow Jewish students, younger generations are becoming increasingly less knowledgeable about this tragic event.

Sophia Burke | Design Editor

We must teach one another to hold onto this part of history uniting the Jewish community. Together, we can bring light to something that cast so much darkness. Keeping Holocaust education alive in universities, beyond dedicated programs and degrees, would help preserve the memory of the six million Jewish people we lost. Beyond the genocide, Jews are still hurting. Students, regardless of demographic, must engage in deeper learning and understanding.

SU offers classes about the Holocaust as well as the Spector/Warren Fellowship for Holocaust and Human Rights Education. This administrative commitment to teaching SU students about the Holocaust is sacred, but often lost on students with little interest in learning about other cultures.

Programs like March Of The Living, which is held annually, aim to teach people of all ages and backgrounds about the Holocaust. The initiative takes participants to Poland and Israel to gain a firsthand understanding of the history while making time and space to celebrate the joy in Jewish existence today. I personally attended this program, and it moved me to see people from around the world coming together to honor the lives lost.

A memory I will always hold is walking 1.9 miles from Auschwitz I, the main camp, to Auschwitz II-Birkenau. I walked out with my life, unlike so many of my people 80 years ago.

“Every day I live and breathe, I live and breathe for you,” I wrote on a wooden, garden-like marker, finalizing my walk as I crossed the train tracks. Engaging in such an intimate way with critical Jewish history made it clear to me why Holocaust Remembrance Day is vital to keep celebrating, but also highlights the lack of proximity to these emotions that keep students from furthering their own education on the topic. This trip makes for a genuine method to ensure younger generations can become knowledgeable about the Holocaust.

On campus, StandWithUs and Chabad SU hosted an event in the Schine Student Center where students painted stones to be sent to the Holocaust Garden of Hope in Texas as part of the Upstander Stone Project.

“Specifically, we tabled to spread awareness of the 1.5 million children who were murdered in the Holocaust,” Sela said.

At the table, students who showed up were assigned the name, place of birth and death and age at death of a child from the Holocaust. We then each painted a stone in recognition of that soul. These “Stones of Remembrance” represent strength and permanence, often left on graves in the Jewish faith out of unending respect for the deceased.

“I felt that this was important for our students at SU because it’s important for all humans to be reminded that we should never let hate and the act of othering creep into our lives, into our society, and that the Holocaust is something we should learn from and never forget,” Sela said.

The power history has on modern-day Jewish people goes beyond faith.

“We had a lot of people, most of whom actually weren’t Jewish who came up and thanked us for having it there and for making an impact,” Ivy Daitch, an Emerson StandWithUs fellow, said. It’s a heartwarming thing for communities to give gratitude and support to one another despite historical differences.

We need to uplift each other on campus right now. Holocaust Remembrance Day is an opportunity to honor and memorialize those who survived and those who perished, but SU offers a wealth of resources that allow this awareness to extend past just one day. The more we embrace each other’s backgrounds and ask questions, the closer we become to a truly equitable community.

Though it happened 80 years ago, we still need to shine a light on the modern impacts of the Holocaust. The only way to build understanding about each other’s cultures and religions is to foster environments of safety and understanding to harbor productive conversations about the emotions and hardships of Jewish students today.

Julia Weinreich is a sophomore design studies major. She can be reached at jcweinre@syr.edu.

Published on February 2, 2025 at 10:48 pm