Hillel hosts two Holocaust survivors

| Senior News Editor

In remembrance of Kristallnacht, a two-day period of anti-Semitic violence that occurred during the Holocaust, Washington University and the University’s Hillel chapter held their annual Holocaust Awareness Week with a special keynote address given by Holocaust survivors Bob Geminder, 83, and Gabriella Karin, 87, Nov. 8.

The Holocaust Awareness Week’s programming began with a film screening of “Who Will Write Our History? The Secret Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto” Nov. 3, followed by a Holocaust film screening and lecture, “Revisiting Claude Lanzman’s ‘Shoah,’” with professor Sue Vice Nov. 5.

Hillel’s programming started on Thursday with the “Kristallnacht Commemoration Keynote” given by Geminder and Karin.

According to Hillel’s social justice fellow Margaret Butler, it’s important to hear from Holocaust survivors, as it helps to pass on their stories to future generations.

“They lived through this historical moment but every single time that they tell their story, they’re creating secondary sources, they’re creating people who have heard the story and can keep that narrative alive, especially when we do live in a time where people try to deny the Holocaust,” Butler said. “I think it’s very important for them to feel that their story is being passed on to other people that can really remember that this is a real event and stuff happens to real people.”

Vice President of Social Justice for the Hillel Leadership Council junior Dora Schoenberg was the main organizer for the event. Although her planning began in the spring, the event didn’t quite get off the ground until this fall.

According to Schoenberg, who knew the two survivors personally, Geminder put into perspective how large the Holocaust was.

“I think Bob’s main thing was you can’t compare anything to the Holocaust,” Schoenberg said. “That these things will continue to happen and you can’t really stop them but in the Holocaust the Jews were defenseless. That’s why it couldn’t be prevented back then.”

Geminder survived the Holocaust by what he calls “pure luck.” He was just six years old when he and his family, alongside 20,000 other Jews, were marched to a nearby cemetery to be killed by Nazis. His family was near the cemetery’s back wall, and by the time it was dark and snow was falling, the soldiers turned in for the night, leaving 12,000 massacred. Karin, on the other hand, survived by stowing away in a convent at the age of eleven.

“She miraculously survived in a convent [most of] the time,” Schoenberg said. “It’s amazing because they usually searched convents for kids hiding but she was able to stay there. She said it was a very hard experience.”

Karin is currently a sculpture artist in Los Angeles, where she creates pieces that commemorate the Holocaust as a way to work through what she experienced.

“She is so interested in art and she is working on channeling her Holocaust experience into art and she’s involved in lots of sculptures,” Hillel Leadership Council Holocaust Awareness chair Olivia Butler said.

Karin and Geminder share more than just their survival of the Holocaust—the two have been dating for the past three years.

“It’s always an honor to hear from Holocaust survivors. Especially hearing from them, [because] they are such positive people, and they have such amazing personalities,” Butler said.

The two advocated for activism outside of the Jewish community, as well. According to Butler, they emphasized that as a generation we cannot stay silent.

“They are really positive people and they were stressing a lot that by not sharing stories, then we are allowing the aggressor to win,” Butler said. “They were talking about the importance of not letting their stories be silenced and that by telling their stories they feel like they’re doing justice and they’re giving honor to victims who have passed away and attribute it to them. Also, I think they also were very adamant about being proactive against any kind of injustice currently.”

On Friday, Hillel hosted a “Shabbat around Wash. U. Dinner with Survivors,” where about thirty students had the chance to sit down and eat with Geminder and Karin.

“I think that the students that attended that dinner were very curious not just to say ‘Oh, I’m here with these two survivors’ but to really get an insight for their story and really took that meaning to heart,” Butler said. “I think that that dinner ended up being very successful and students that went felt very impacted by their stories, is what I was hearing as I was leaving. They were all very excited to hear from these two folks, especially since there’s not very many survivors left.”

Butler believes that gathering in support of the Jewish community through Holocaust Awareness Week is important in the wake of the Tree of Life shooting.

“While there is tragedy, I think that this is a beautiful thing that is coming out of it,” Butler said. “So many people are wanting to come together. I’m just very hopeful that more Jewish students will want to be involved in the community in any way that we can to make that a warm and welcoming space for individuals.”

Sign up for the email edition

Stay up to date with everything happening at Washington University and beyond.

Subscribe