Every year, fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors remain alive to share their experiences.
On Thursday night, Holocaust survivor Michael Herskovitz was brought to Penn’s campus by the Hillel Holocaust Education Committee to tell his story.
“I don’t know how I survived,” Herskovitz said. “But I did, and that’s why I want the world to know what happened.”
“There are so few survivors left,” said College junior Lianna Brenner, one of the leaders of the Holocaust Education Committee. “It’s really important to honor the stories of the survivors while they’re still alive.”
Herskovitz described his life in Czechoslovakia before the war and his experiences in various concentration camps.
“Deep inside I knew that I would never go home,” he said. “I just lived to get to the next meal.”
Herskovitz is one of 31 Holocaust survivors and liberators who travel around the country as part of the Holocaust Awareness Museum’s mission to educate students about the Holocaust. This year, the museum brought speakers to 250 schools in the United States, reaching about 23,000 students.
“You are the last generation to hear an eyewitness speak to you,” said Phil Holtje, the Holocaust Awareness Museum’s program director, who introduced Herskovitz to the students who attended the speech.
This point was emphasized again by Herskovitz’s wife, Tonya.
“We are depending on you to go forward and tell everyone about the Holocaust,” she said. “You can never let it happen again.”
Herskovitz’s speech was just one event organized by the Holocaust Education Committee in order to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. Last night, students shared poems and stories about their personal connections to the Holocaust in the Shotel-Dubin Auditorium in Hillel.
Students also read the names of Holocaust victims aloud on College Green today from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“We wanted people to be able to relate to a name,” said College senior Cindy Berman, one of the organizers of the event.
“Six million is too big of a number to comprehend,” said College freshman Farrel Levenson, who attended Herskovitz’s speech. “It’s an honor to be able to hear about the Holocaust firsthand and to witness the strength of someone who went through it.”
“The Holocaust is not just Jewish history, it’s world history,” Herskovitz said. “Tell the world what the world went through so that it will never happen again.”
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