We were lucky enough to be able to speak with a holocaust survivor on Friday, February 24th. Though unfortunately due to the combination of time and the way the human mind works, a lot of the information that we could have had was lost in the last 80 years. However the information we did gain was very useful.

Over the course of our call, Mr. Held talked to us about his experience during and after the holocaust, Mr. Held went into a concentration camp at the age of 8, when we asked about his knowledge of the situation he said “I couldn’t really know, I was just following my parents” during his time in concentration camps, he should have died twice. He was sent to the gas chambers, however on that day the camp ran out of Zyklon B. And when he was lined up to be shot, he was pushed down and saved by an old man who took the bullet for him.

After the holocaust, Mr. Held and his mother went back to Hungary until he had to escape in 1956 during the revolution against Russia, and in 1959, he got his VISA and came to the US.

While the interview was a little bit tricky, I am so glad we got to interview Mr. Held because not only was it an amazing experience for our group, but it was also an experience that I would have never expected to have.

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We sat down for an interview with Tanya Gersh, Tonya Gersh was a victim of an Anti Semitic Troll Storm, a troll storm is when a group of people gain access to your professions, address and contact information and decide to spread hate about you online. This can be done through direct messaging, doxing, or leaving hateful comments on sites related to a person. Not only was Tanya attacked, but her 9 and 12 year old sons.

Tanya spoke about how she had this naive understanding of hate, especially antisemitism, she claims she thought that “as a society we had moved past hate and become more accepting” but when everything happened to her she described it as “An instant change, I was almost heartbroken”.

After the attacks in 2017, Tanya went to court against Andrew Anglin, the founder of the Daily Stormer, a Right Wing Nazi. Tanya won 14 million dollars against the Daily Stormer and got it removed from the web. Tonya spoke on the difference between hate speech and free speech, she said “They were allowed to tell me that they hated me because I was a “Dirty Jewish Kike”… Where they crossed the line, you can not insight violence upon somebody, you can’t say “Ok Masses! Let’s gang up on this person and make their lives hell!” (17:34)

Even though Tanya was a victim of a hate crime, she claims that if it had never happened to her, she would never be as happy as she is today, she used the quote “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Tanya talked about how growing up Jewish, she learned resilience, and how every Torah portion, and every Jewish holiday was praising resilience and how she used her faith to persevere through her struggles.

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We departed from class at 2:15 and started preparing for the interview. We entered the zoom at 2:30, due to a technical glitch, we actually joined at 2:38. “Can you explain to us why you decided to join the ADL and why you’ve stayed there?” Shaffer asked after Dante officially dismissed our tardiness. Scott said that while he focused primarily on civil rights problems throughout law school, which helped organizations like the ADL, he yearned for a more practical experience. He tried to reunite and reconstruct the Jewish community before he joined the ADL because the iron curtain was coming down. He assisted Holocaust survivors during this time. Additionally, it gave me a fresh perspective on the Cold War. Nevertheless, he assists all minorities, not only Jews. He also gave us more information about how his children are coping with and learning about issues he has never had to, such antisemitism, which illustrates how quickly and widely it spread. Social media is primarily to blame for the rapid surge of antisemitism. We can see that there were just 12 instances of antisemitism in NJ in 2017, as opposed to 179 cases in 2020. Additionally, New York has the most antisemitic incidents. Nevertheless, there has been an increase in hate crimes against minorities across the US, and there are a few causes for this. One is that social media helps bring hateful people together and turn people against each other.

In the past, if you wanted your message to be heard by everyone, you had to go to a radio station or a newspaper publisher and ask them to input your message. However, doing so would result in negative publicity, so this rarely happened. Nowadays, you can easily go to a media app and post pretty much anything you want. Another reason is that due to polarization, the opposing side is unable to hear what we have to say. Additionally, it provides people with a justification for hiding their side’s ideas in order to promote their ideology. Last but not least, it demonstrates how those on the right can only control those on the right, and vice versa for those on the left.
The spread of illiteracy across the US is extremely evident. It most frequently manifests in seven pervasive myths about Jews. Which are: Jews hold sway over the world. They have a financial connection. They only have loyalty for Israel. They are different from non-Jews and offer Jewish people benefits. Christ was murdered, according to Jewish tradition, but the pope has refuted this idea, saying it is untrue. that there was no Holocaust! The last is anti-Israel sentiment.

Personally, I was startled to learn just how awful things truly are for minorities in the US and how they are most likely going to get a lot worse very rapidly. Sadly, this also clearly demonstrates the fundamental flaws in both democracy and freedom. The fact that New York has the highest number of anti-Semitic occurrences surprised me the most because I had always considered it to be one of the safest locations for Jews. However, I can now see that their high population made them a more attractive target.

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On Thursday the 26th at the beginning of Big Time, we started heading out for our first fieldwork. Led by Jacob we took the one train for 5 stops to Rector Street where we walked a few blocks to the museum where we entered the Jewish Heritage Museum

The first exhibit we went to was “The Holocaust, What Hate Can Do” we mainly learned about antisemitism, and the 2000+ year history of it. But there was a strong focus on the Holocaust and those who survived it and the stories they told. The entire exhibit was completely moving to me and seeing all of the horrific events that occurred really lit up this spark of anger, because recently there have been major sparks of hate and antisemitism not only in the U.S but also in large countries in Europe. We were in that exhibit for around 2-2.5 hours

The second exhibit we went into was the “life after the holocaust” which was an exhibit about the photos of people and their story about what they did after the holocaust.

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