SC officials, Jewish community honor liberation of Auschwitz on 80th anniversary

Yahoo

27-01-2025

Henry Goldberg, 76, points to a display of his family at the Liberation of Auschwitz 80th Commemoration Monday. (Shaun Chornobroff/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA— Henry Goldberg stood in the lobby at the University of South Carolina's alumni center staring at a display of his family's story. His father survived the horrors of Auschwitz in Poland, while his mother survived a different death camp in Germany.
Monday marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Nazis' largest extermination camp. As survivors of the Holocaust and their children spoke, Brown thought not only of his parents, but family members who didn't survive.
'There's an extra feeling that most people don't have,' Goldberg, 76, of Columbia, told the SC Daily Gazette while pointing at a picture of his family. 'There's a stronger feeling for me than most people.'
More than 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust. Auschwitz alone accounted for the murders of 1.1 million men, women and children deported there between 1940 and Jan. 27, 1945, when Soviet troops liberated the camp.
More than 500 people came to USC's Pastides Alumni Center to commemorate that day, while also recognizing the continued hostility and prejudice against Jewish people.
The event's organizer was the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust, which the state Legislature created in 1989 to promote awareness of the Holocaust's atrocities and to honor the survivors and death camp liberators who made the Palmetto State their home.
During WWII, more than 900,000 men received their military training at South Carolina bases and 180,000 South Carolinians, including 2,500 women, served in World War II.
Lilly Filler, the council's chair, is the daughter of Auschwitz survivors. When they immigrated to South Carolina in June 1949, Filler said her parents felt the urge to speak about their experience.
They talked about their ordeal at synagogues, schools and anywhere else they were welcome. She read a passage from a speech he gave in 1995 commemorating the 50th anniversary of World War II.
'It would be easy for me to be filled with rage and agony over the human depravity that I experienced in the Holocaust,' she said. 'But when I recall my first sight of the American soldiers entering our concentration camp, it was as though God Himself had sent his own angels of deliverance.'
Harry Schneider of Charleston was less than 3 years old in September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Luckily, his family had escaped into a forest before the Germans arrived. They remained there for two years before his father was accepted into the Russian army.
Schnieder, who came to the United States in 1950, remembers cold winters and little food.
'I remember being 5 or 6 years old and waiting in long lines with a bucket trying to get a little bit of milk,' he told attendees. 'But somehow we managed to survive.'
The Anne Frank Center at the University of South Carolina, which co-hosted the event, is the only North American partner of the house in Amsterdam where its namesake hid from Nazis eight decades ago. The center's traveling exhibit is soon to visit its 40th state. So far, more than 25,000 people have seen it, said former USC President Harris Pastides, who was instrumental in the center's 2021 opening.
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'Our work will not be done until there are no 11th graders, no eighth graders, no children in our state and in our world who don't understand the horror and the tragedy as well as the significance of the liberation of Auschwitz,' said Pastides.
Beyond survivors and religious leaders, speakers included Gov. Henry McMaster, Lt. Gov. Pam Evette, state Superintendent Ellen Weaver, and Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann.
The keynote speaker was Chuck Todd, NBC's chief political analyst and former 'Meet The Press' host.
Todd, who is Jewish, talked about being raised to be a 'quiet Jew' — one who isn't open about his religion. Todd told the crowd how his mother was likened to Satan as a child and asked if she was hiding horns underneath her black hair.
Being a 'quiet jew' isn't an option in today's world of misinformation, Todd said, addressing the rise of antisemitism since Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, resulting in a war between Hamas and Israel that sparked sometimes violent anti-Israel demonstrations on college campuses in other states.
'The ease with which public opinion against Jews and Israel specifically was changed and manipulated, not by facts on the ground, but by sentiment on social media thanks to algorithms that are designed to amplify popular sentiment over actual facts, it's quite scary,' he said.
Rabbi Sam Rose of Temple of Israel in Greenville spoke passionately about the rise of hate against Jewish people in America.
The Anti-Defamation League calculated 5,204 incidents of antisemitism between the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 and the end of 2023. That's more than the entirety of 2022.
'May we work tirelessly to create a world where love triumphs over hate, where justice overcomes the fear that so many people have of difference,' Rose said, 'and every person is able to truly find shalom, a sense of wholeness in the dignity of who they are.'