International Holocaust Remembrance Day resonated differently than observances of years before among the Gainesville Jewish community on Monday.
It came with a mixture of unease and optimism as antisemitism is on the rise and a ceasefire deal is happening in Israel.
Monday was the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, also known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Chabad UF Jewish Student and Community Center hosted an event with Auschwitz survivor Helga Melmed as a speaker. She spoke to a crowd of over 400 people about the horrors of the Holocaust she experienced as a German Jew.
Lori Butler, of Green Cove Springs, drove an hour with her husband Jesse Butler to hear Melmed speak.
“I think, in particular since October 7, that there's much more concern,” Butler said about this day of remembrance, “and that makes today even more special and more important.”
Melmed told her story as the room full of people listened intently. She shared details about her childhood in Germany, and her experience as she began to face discrimination for being Jewish.
She spoke about the horrors of Auschwitz, and how she survived and eventually ended up in the United States.
Melmed spoke solemnly throughout her speech, but she cracked a few jokes about her time in America that had the whole audience laughing.
When the floor was open for questions, an audience member asked her if she saw parallels between today’s environment and what she saw growing up and what led to the Holocaust.
“I do see a lot of parallels,” Melmed said.
“I will say that to everybody here to think on your own,” she said. “Think what's best for everybody, not just for some people.”
Ally Post, a second-year pharmacy student at the University of Florida, came to the event with her friend Elizabeth Leonard, a third-year law student at UF.
“It made it so much more real to hear from someone who was actually there,” Post said. “It was just really impactful to me.”
Leonard said that hearing Melmed speak was a reminder to stand by your beliefs and stand up for what's right.
Rabbi Berl Goldman, the director of Chabad UF, said that education is necessary so something like the Holocaust never happens again.
“This event of Holocaust Remembrance Day will hopefully teach love, teach and nurture tolerance and most importantly, to erase bigotry, hate and evil amongst us,” he said.
Rabbi Goldman said that remembering the Holocaust shouldn’t be limited to designated days.
“Suffering and persecution of people need to be felt by all of humanity, every day,” he said.
Lauren Robbins, a University of Florida public relations and women’s studies junior, said it’s important to her that Jews and non-Jews alike take time out of each year to remember the Holocaust.
She said she feels nervous about the recent rise of antisemitism in the U.S., as a Jewish student herself.
“I don't even like to say it,” she said, “but history could repeat itself.”
In 2023, there were 8,873 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in the United States, according to Statista. That’s more than double the anti-Semitic attacks in 2022, which was 3,698.
Robbins personally knew Liri Albag, an Israeli woman who was taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and was released as part of the ceasefire agreement Jan. 25.
She met Albag in 2022 at Cedar Lake Camp, where Robbins was a spin instructor and Albag was a camp member. Albag attended as a camper the following year as well, and the two were able to get to know each other.
She said knowing that Albag was held hostage for 470 days didn’t feel real.
“Knowing that she's been released is – magical,” Robbins said. “That's the only word I could find in my vocabulary.”
Kenneth Wald, a distinguished professor of political science emeritus at UF, thinks that International Holocaust Remembrance Day will be observed more readily this year than before the start of the war.
“October 7 reminded many Jews that they can be at risk,” he said.
The 2023 attack that took place in southern Israel left 1,200 Jews dead. It is the most Jewish people killed in one day since the Holocaust.
“It's not something that happened 90 years ago,” professor Wald said, “it was something that happened, you know, 15 months ago.”
Professor Wald also serves on the board of directors of the Jewish Council of North Central Florida. He dedicates most of his time to Holocaust education and programming.
Both of his parents survived the Holocaust, and he considers being a second-generation Holocaust survivor as a part of his identity.
“The concept of genocide is very real to me,” Wald said. “It's not hypothetical or clinical.”
That’s why he said he’s an advocate of teaching the history of the Holocaust “one family at a time,” he said.
“I decided to teach about my family's history as a means of making it a real event for people,” he said, “something that is tangible, and I think that they can at least wrap their heads around.”
The Jewish Council of North Central Florida has worked with both Alachua County and Marion County public school systems to teach students and teachers more about the Holocaust. They have held events where they brought Holocaust survivors and speakers to teach students Holocaust history.
Linda Maurice, the executive director of the Jewish Council of North Central Florida, said she believes the most important thing the Council can do is educate everyone about the horrors of the Holocaust.
“In heated times like we're living in now, it's more important than ever to understand the truth of what has happened in this world in the past so that it won't happen again in the future,” she said.
Maurice said that she thinks the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas has created feelings of optimism and hope in the Gainesville community.
“I'd like to think that no matter what your political affiliation, that you want a war to be over,” she said.