JONATHAN YOUNG Mimi Lauter (left) and
psychology student Megan Michaels remember the
Holocaust.
By Kelly Rayburn
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
UCLA’s deep and personal connection to one of
history’s worst atrocities was clear Tuesday, as students
wept, prayed and sang, joining arms in solemn reflection on
International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
More than 100 community members gathered at Meyerhoff Park,
urging each other to never forget the systematic killing of 6
million Jews during World War II, lest history repeat itself.
The world has not learned all it should from the Holocaust, said
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, director of Hillel Council.
“We haven’t succeeded,” he said.
“Genocides exist all over the world.”
Seidler-Feller urged people to realize that just because Jews
were victims does not mean they are “immunized” from
being victimizers.
“Think about the others, the other, the other … ,”
he said. “The Holocaust happened because people did not think
of “˜the other.'”
The memorial concluded with the singing of the Israeli national
anthem, which followed a prayer of mourning, or the
“Kaddish.”
Second-year physiological science student Tami Reiss was raised
in a family which did not say the “Kaddish,” unless an
immediate family member passed away. But after she visited
Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps, she said, she changed her
philosophy.
“I stood in front of a huge pit of ashes and bone where
thousands of people died with their brethren …,” she said.
“Think of all the people who never had the
“˜Kaddish’ said for them.”
Afterward the memorial, many listened to a first-hand account
from two Holocaust survivors, David and Yetta Kane, grandparents of
second-year UCLA student Emily Kane.
David’s daughter and son attended UCLA as well.
“UCLA’s been good to us,” he said. “But
think of all the Emily’s there would have been if it
weren’t for (the Holocaust).”
He asked: How many Albert Einstein’s died? How many Jonas
Salk’s died?
Kane recalled being taken away by German Nazis and spending time
in a concentration camp.
“You can never imagine what it feels like, to commit no
crime, to do no wrong ““ other than being Jewish ““ and
to be treated lower than animals,” he said. “We looked
for potato peelings in garbage cans.”
Kane remembers bodies piled up, “like bones for a
dog.”
Yetta Kane, meanwhile, still wakes up in the middle of the
night, sweaty after dreaming of fleeing from German soldiers. She
did just that as a young child, going from Poland deeper and deeper
into Russia, during the coldest parts of the year. She hid from
German soldiers in bushes by day and fled eastward by night.
Like her husband, Yetta also lived in a small Polish town, where
her family was one of seven Jewish families. The Jewish children
played with children from Christian families, she said, there was
never any religious tension ““Â until the Nazis
arrived.
One day she was playing outside when a child pointed out to a
Nazi officer the patriarch of one of the Jewish families, and said
“Jew.” The officer took out his pistol and shot the man
through the head, killing him cold-bloodedly and without
hesitation, she said.
“This was my introduction to the Nazis,” she said,
holding the hands of her husband and grand-daughter.
Both David and Yetta, while telling of hellish experiences in
the past, also told of the importance of tolerance in the
present.
When one student brought up the hatred between some Jews and
Palestinians in the Middle East, Yetta said, “They should
love each other.”
“You cannot buy into that,” David told the students.
“When you see people like that, they are infected and you
should not stand by them.”
Emily said her parents are a source of pride and inspiration for
her. She added that her interest in social justice stems from her
coming from a family that will not let her forget the suffering of
many people throughout the world.
“I’m very proud of them,” she said,
introducing her grandparents.