MILWAUKEE, Wisc. — In 2006, the United Nations General Assembly recognized the first International Holocaust Remembrance Day, where the global community honored the more than 11 million Jews and non-Jews who were killed during the height of the Nazi regime between 1933 to 1945.
January 27 was chosen to commemorate the date when the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated, which Holocaust Education Resource Center Executive Director Samantha Abramson says is still a fresh memory for those survivors who are still with us.
“Certainly, immediately after the Holocaust, there was just this period of trauma within the Jewish community. Trauma within the families who lost loved ones. And there was a process that we certainly had to go through as a Jewish people. And we're still going through it. Those traumas don't go away,” said Abramson.
Those traumas, Abramson says, can be heightened when instances of antisemitism occur.
Data from the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Jewish Community Relations Council shows that there was a 459 percent increase in antisemitic incidents across Wisconsin between 2015 to 2021, with a nearly 80 percent spike in activity within the middle school and high school level.
This, she says, is one of the key reasons their work is so important.
“As we lose our remaining Holocaust survivors who are all in their 80s, 90s and 100s, at this point, we are focusing on the next generation. How are we training the next generation of leaders so that we don't have more genocide, so that the Holocaust really doesn't happen ever again?” said Abramson.
Abramson says there is progress in this work, including the state’s Holocaust Education Bill.
Still, she says the work begins at an even simpler level.
“It's up to us. It's up to individuals who choose, through their actions and words, to combat hate, to stand up when something isn’t right, and to treat their fellow human beings as their friends,” said Abramson.
