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BSA
Hillel remembers the Holocaust
by Casey Bolduc
Exchange Staff
Wednesday April 18 is known as Holocaust Remembrance Day and Hillel invited guest speaker Stephen Lewy, a German Jew and Holocaust refugee to tell his story in Pierce Hall last night.
The event was opened by Bill
Beardslee who gave a short introduction where he touched on the
recent tragedy at Virginia Tech acknowledging the death of another Holocaust
refugee and engineering professor at VT, Liviu Librescu. In
his opening Beardslee asked the silent room; with the amount of violence in
the media today, "Is it any wonder, tragedies like this take place?"
This in support of the intentions that Beardslee and
Hillel had when they organized the event and that was to inform and raise
awareness of the hatred and violence that in some places still exists. Jon
Wilcox, Hillel's AOC representative feels that these efforts can make a
difference. "You need a strong voice to be heard, and even in a small
community like this one, a strong voice can make a difference."
Professor Anne Huebel set the context with a
brief history of the Holocaust that took place from 1940 in some cases until
1945. The remarks also stated that the Holocaust was not only limited to
Jews, but also political prisoners, homosexuals and the handicapped. Lewy
then spoke about his life that started in Germany where he was born and
brought an audience of over 150 students and other members of the community
through his travels to France where he moved from home to home, and finally
to the United States where he was reunited with his parents. Along the way
he had many encounters with Nazi soldiers, even on his trip on a Portuguese
ship from South Africa to America the ship was stopped by a Nazi submarine
and was inspected.
Out of the 40 Jewish school children that he left
Germany with, 20 are still alive today and they still research the Holocaust
to gain other perspectives of what had happened. At the event there was an
information desk set up with books, newspaper clippings and other literature
for those interested along with donation cans that Hillel and Franklin
Pierce College will donate to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.
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