Holocaust Survivors Post October 7 th by Masha Pearl
Recurring nightmares, fears of venturing outside, trouble sleeping…these are classic symptoms of PTSD. Coping with debilitating anxiety is not how elderly survivors of the Holocaust should have to live out their remaining years.
As the descendant of Holocaust survivors and the Executive Director of The Blue Card, which offers financial, medical and emotional support to survivors, my heart breaks to hear story after story of people who have lived through unspeakable horrors reliving those experiences again as virulent antisemitism surges both here and abroad.
The October 7 Hamas terrorist attack unleashed another wave of hatred directed against Jews, the same deeply rooted antisemitism we have seen century after century. Always laying just beneath the surface, bigotry and racism reemerges quickly in times of turmoil. While war always brings up complex issues of morality, the conflict has become an excuse for inflammatory rhetoric and misinformation that distorts history and denies the truth of the systematic killing of millions of Jews.
On TV and social media, on the streets and in the news, survivors see incidents like the targeting of a Jewish museum director in Brooklyn whose house was smeared with red paint and antisemitic writing. They hear of a hate crime and reported rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in France and of political parties with ties to Nazi groups gaining footholds in Europe. They view protestors on campuses worldwide not only tolerating antisemitism but calling for the destruction of Israel.
Some frightened survivors tell us of bringing precious valuables with them when they leave their homes. And for the first time, a younger generation of Jews is confronting persecution and a society that responds ineffectively to this intolerance. Yet some Holocaust survivors, like 85-year-old Sami Steigmann, who spent three years in a labor camp and, being too young to work, was subjected to medical experiments, have reservations about linking the barbarism of October 7 with the magnitude of the Holocaust.
“The Holocaust is a unique moment in history–it was industrialized murder,” he says. “What happened on October 7th, was so inhumane, so brutal but it’s not appropriate to compare what happened in the Holocaust with the attack on Israel. The Holocaust must be taught forever and ever, because it is the best example of what hate would do to a person, to a group of people, to a nation and to the world.”
Sami and other survivors are a living memory of the atrocities perpetrated on the Jewish people by Hitler, and those who are still able are heeding this latest warning call, bearing witness and sharing their experiences of surviving in unimaginable conditions. He recently traveled nine hours just to talk with a group of middle school kids and gave a talk before hundreds of Google employees.
“What’s happening in the world, it’s unreal,” Sami says. “There is a virus of bullying, bigotry, hatred of Jews, racist ideology. The only way that we can combat that virus is through education. And my mission in life is to educate the next generation, how the Holocaust happened from zero to a point of no return because people did not react in time.”
These voices will soon be lost. It is our voices that must continue to carry the message, to learn from what they endured and pass it on to younger generations so that never again truly means never.