On January 27th of every year, we commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The United Nations General Assembly officially stated in 2005 that this day is to mark the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945 and to educate about the six million lives lost. According to the resolution, which was adopted by the General Assembly, “The Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people, will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice … the United Nations will designate 27 January as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.” On this day, events such as ceremonies and lectures about the Holocaust take place to educate the young minds of our upcoming generations about this immense, historical tragedy. On Friday, January 26, students from Tenafly High School’s Israeli Culture Club (ICC) hosted a table event in the school’s Lalor Library Media Center, commemorating this year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The club’s event was part of an international campaign called UNDENIED, a Holocaust memorial and awareness project by the Students Supporting Israel (SSI). The goal of this project was to hand out free books and testimonies about the Holocaust to educate students to make sure that there will not be Holocaust denial. The club volunteers and SSI representatives that attended distributed hundreds of books to THS faculty and students throughout the day. Among the books distributed was the memoir, I Have Lived 1000 Years by Livia Bitton-Jackson, which shares the story of a 13-year-old Hungarian girl’s life throughout the Holocaust with her family. In addition to the Holocaust books, there was a QR code that connected attendees to an Instagram page (eva.stories), which illustrated a young girl from Hungary named Eva. The goal of the page was to show what life would be like in the Holocaust with internet. Furthermore, the ICC layed out a chronological timeline that was inspired from the website of Yad Vashem, ranging from 1933 to 1945. Beside the timeline, there were 6 candles lit to represent the six million Jewish people that were murdered during the Holocaust. A number of students that attended the event were given signs with the phrases #WeRemember and #NeverAgain to take pictures with. Every year, many people around the world photograph themselves with these hashtags and post on social media to spread awareness about the Holocaust.
At the conclusion of the event, all the books that were donated to the ICC had been given away. “We want to thank Student Supporting Israel (SSI) for generously donating these books to the Tenafly High School community,” Elad Litvin, the president of ICC, said. “I believe, as a senior, that we should be doing this table event every year in order to bring awareness to the Holocaust and by using these books we can tell these stories to make sure that this will never happen again.”
Litvin stressed that, with the rise of antisemitism, this generation of youths should keep remembering the tragedies and the losses from the Holocaust, and as an overall society, we should never let anything remotely like the Holocaust happen again.
