OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — On this International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park says there is hope and strife.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day signifies the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army in 1945.
Jessica Rockhold, Executive Director for the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education, says they report antisemitism at an all-time high, especially after recent antisemitic and racist incidents in metro schools.
“We are dealing with recent incidents in our community where we are seeing heightened antisemitism, racism, and homophobia,” Rockhold said.
Recently, Overland Park police responded to racist and antisemitic graffiti inside of Blue Valley High School and racist social media messages at Bishop Miege.
“To say something is antisemitic, you have learned something to make it a reference point,“ she said. “When a person draws a swastika on a wall, they know what kind of reaction that will elicit.”
Rockhold says the community should focus on education beyond the facts to then build empathy.
Holocaust survivor Judy Jacobs is focused on setting the record straight.
“The horrors of Bergen-Belsen will always be with me," Jacobs said. "I lost my childhood. I never learned how to play. I was faced with decisions very early on, and many of those things are still with me. On the other hand, I’m very grateful to be alive and I’ve had a very good life.”
She described the moments leading up to Adolf Hitler’s invasion.
“A once totally content, relatively prosperous Jewish community was reduced to an underclass,” she said. “My grandfather lost his business, my dad was a radiologist, and all of a sudden there were no patients, Jews couldn’t pay, non-Jews would not consult a Jewish doctor. The war intensified. Hungary thought they were safe from Hitler though the borders were closed and there was no real news.”
Jacobs said there “were several months of absolute terror,” and then she was deported to Bergen-Belsen, where she stayed and then went to Switzerland and came to the United States in 1946.
Jacobs graduated with her Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan, then received her MBA and Ph.D. from UMKC.
She also feels the weight of the recent local antisemitic acts.
"The Holocaust really did not end for us in 1945,” she said. “Maybe déjà vu is an overstatement, but the feeling is there."
Now at 85 years old, Jacobs has shared her story dozens and dozens of times.
“It’s really not fun, preparation is very painful because you’re revisiting the whole issue,” she said.
Jacobs believes that to reach people, education should be done at the personal level to then understand the impact on Jewish people.
“I hope by and large I’ve made an impact, you never know,” she said.
Her reasoning for sharing her story remains the same, to honor the 6 million people killed.
“To try to set the historical record straight, there are deniers, there are revisionists, and I was there,” she said. “We have to learn from the past. People have to know the atrocities of what human beings are capable of.”
They ask the community this question on a day of remembrance.
“What can we do as people with the benefit of the hindsight?” Rockhold said.
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