Hamas killing spree haunts Holocaust survivors participating in 'March of the Living'
Holocaust survivors participating include Smil Bercu Sacagiu, 87, whose home was hit by a rocket from Gaza, Jacqueline Gliksman, 81, whose home was torched by a Palestinian infiltrators, and others.
Israel's Holocaust commemorations this year have a searing significance for six elderly survivors now deeply scarred by the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 that sparked the ongoing Gaza war.
The killing and kidnapping spree by Palestinian infiltrators on a Jewish holiday morning shook the sense of security of Israelis - not least, those who had witnessed the state emerge as a safe haven after the Nazi genocide.
For Bellha Haim, 86, the upheaval is especially profound.
Her grandson Yotam - like her, a resident of a village near the Gaza border - was taken hostage by Hamas and managed to escape, only to be accidentally shot dead by Israeli soldiers.
The trauma drove Haim to return to her native Poland, which she had fled with her family as a child during World War Two, and where she will, on Monday, take part of the "March of the Living" at the site of the Auschwitz death camp.
The annual ceremony is timed to coincide with Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day.
A cohort of university presidents and chancellors from America and Canada will participate in the 2024 International March of the Living. The event will be headed up by former US Secretary of Education /
Dr. King leads a system of 64 colleges and universities in New York State, the largest comprehensive system of public higher education in the United States.
The trip will come to a close after Holocaust Remembrance Day, during which participants join Holocaust survivors on a solemn march from Auschwitz to Birkenau to commemorate the Nazi horrors.
"I never went back, and I wasn't convinced to go back," Haim said during a meeting with other survivors ahead of the trip.
"But this time, when they told me that they were connecting the Holocaust and what I call the 'Holocaust of October 7' - because then in the Holocaust we (Jews) were not a united people, we didn't have a country, and suddenly this pride of mine that has been broken, my pride in my people and my country that was shattered in front of my eyes - I said, 'This time I will break my oath, and I will go out.'"
As a teenager, Yotam had taken part in the annual Auschwitz vigil, and Haim said she saw the event as a chance for communion with him and other victims of the Hamas attack.
"I will go out in the name of Yotam, who marched there when he was in high school, and I will go out there to shout out the cry of the slain, of the babies, of all my good friends that I will never meet again,” she said.
Among those joining her will be 90-year-old Daniel Louz, whose hometown, Kibbutz Beeri, lost a tenth of its residents to the Palestinian terrorists.
In some ways, he said, that ordeal was worse for him than the European war, when he escaped Nazi round-ups in his native France, although half his family perished in Poland.
After he awoke to the sound of Arabic yelling and gunfire, "I was constantly busy with surviving and figuring out what to do," Louz said. "In France, as a child, I suffered all kinds of post-traumas that I’ve learned to cope with. But in Beeri, it was the first time that I felt the fear of death."
A neighboring house was riddled with bullets. Louz's was untouched. He says he imagined the souls of the six million Holocaust victims steering Hamas away from him. "They probably wanted me to be here to tell this story," he said, weeping.
Other Holocaust survivors participating in the March of the Living include Smil Bercu Sacagiu, 87, whose home was hit by a rocket from Gaza, and Jacqueline Gliksman, 81, whose home was torched by a Palestinian infiltrator.
"What was left, and luckily the terrorist didn’t see it, is my grandchildren," she said, referring to gold figurines on a necklace she was wearing. "That's the only thing I have left."
Before he was seized, Haim's grandson left a text message: "They’re burning down my house. I smell gas. I'm scared."
She said that it reminded her of a Holocaust-era song in Yiddish, invoking centuries of pogroms, with the refrain "fire, Jews, fire." A veteran campaigner for peace with the Palestinians, Haim said she would no longer pursue that activism.
"I'm not able to," she said. "Now what interests me is only my people.”
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.
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This Holocaust Remembrance Day, survivors have a message: Don't let history 'repeat itself'
It took Fred Kurz five decades before he could talk about his experiences during the Holocaust.
He didn't think his story was important, he said, and it was painful to relive it. He couldn't even talk with his sister, Doriane, who died in 2005, about what they had both endured, other than give a knowing glance or nod when something reminded them of their lives during World War II ‒ and they were so close, "we were one person."
"It was too hard," he said. "It was terrible to think about it. We tried to put it out of our heads."
But in 1993, his Southern New Jersey synagogue planned a Holocaust remembrance event, and a rabbi asked Kurz to share his story, one the rabbi hadn't even really heard himself. He asked Kurz to tell it, just to him, so Kurz did.
After Kurz finished, the astonished rabbi told him, "You have a story that really needs telling," and so, "with great trepidation," Kurz began speaking about his past: to synagogues, schools, churches and other organizations. He's been doing it ever since.
Kurz is one of several Holocaust survivors now telling their stories in short videos as part of an international effort to tackle Holocaust denialism and hate speech. The effort coincides with Yom Hashoah, on Sunday and Monday, the Holocaust observance that lines up with the Hebrew calendar.
Amid concerns over rising antisemitism in the U.S. and tensions over the Israel-Hamas war, Kurz says the message couldn't be more timely: "As long as I am able to speak, I want the world to understand how close we are getting to the same conditions, the prejudices, and how to avoid that."
'The world should never forget'
"My story specifically isn't important," the now-87-year-old told USA TODAY. "What is important is to know what the conditions were, that the world should never forget how it happened. ... Those conditions, what happened to my family, should never happen again."
But Kurz's story is compelling, one of a successful extended family with a thriving business, a resourceful and selfless mother and two resilient children who were just 9 and 10 when the war ended: The family lived in Holland while his father was working for his family's multinational optical company. His father was arrested on the street, then sent by the Nazis to a succession of camps before he was killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
His mother tried to protect Fred and Doriane, entrusting their safety to the Dutch Underground which hid the children when she was arrested. The siblings were briefly reunited with their mother − but all three ended up at Bergen-Belsen, another notorious camp, where they endured horrifying conditions. Even their liberation by the Soviets was bittersweet, Kurz said, because they had no food or water for two weeks and their mother was ill with typhus. Soon, they lost her, too.
Kurz and his sister were eventually brought to live with an aunt, uncle and two young cousins in Brooklyn. He attended Columbia University − now the site of clashes between police and pro-Palestinian protesters − and became an engineer, working for RCA and General Electric, raising his three daughters with his wife, Rachel, in their Cherry Hill, New Jersey, home.
When the Claims Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a New York-based nonprofit that advocates for Holocaust survivors all over the world, asked him to be part of its #CancelHate campaign to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day, Kurz said he immediately agreed.
"Hate speech is a primary cause of increasing antisemitism, which has recently found its way back into our American society," Kurz says in his video. He recalls how Hitler used Jews as scapegoats, and how Jews were rounded up, brutalized and systematically murdered.
"My concern that I am addressing today is a similarity of unchecked hate speech against many minorities in our society, but particularly Jews, which could lead to tragic events as it did in Nazi Germany. Everyone who understands the dangers that hate speech is doing to our great country needs to speak up, to be the voice of reason, so that history will not repeat itself as it did decades ago.
"Your words matter."
There's more. Read the rest at this link.
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