About 500 people, including U.S. Sen Jon Ossoff, Deputy Consul General of Israel Anna Shteingart, a handful of state and local politicians, and dozens of Jewish community leaders gathered at Greenwood Cemetery in Southwest Atlanta today to mark Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The event was organized by The Breman, Eternal Life-Hemshech, the Lillian and A.J. Weinberg Center for Holocaust Education, and Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta.
The 59th annual ceremony was also a rededication of the Memorial to the Six Million, which has recently undergone a complete renovation led by Landmark Preservation with help from the Atlanta Preservation Center.
Child survivor address antisemitism
George Rishfeld, a child survivor of the Holocaust, was a toddler when his parents handed him over to the Fronckvics, a Catholic family with whom Rishfeld lived for three years. He said the Fronckvics, known as “righteous Gentiles,” took him in “because it was the right thing to do. They saw me as a human being and not as a Jew.” Both of his parents also survived the war.
Rishfeld also expressed concern over recent upticks in antisemitism around the world, particularly on U.S. college campuses following the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent war.
“Before Hitler declared war on the United States in 1941, there were Nazis marching in our streets as Americans. Today at college campuses across our nation, there are Americans marching as Nazis [and shouting], ‘we’re all Hamas!’ Make no mistake about it, when students protest, burn the American flag and chant ‘Death to America,” it has little to do with [the] Israeli military response to the murderous rampage by Hamas Oct. 7, and much to do with antisemitism by Israel’s neighbors and others around the world.
We have to address this head on we cannot stand by without saying or doing something. We must prevent them from occurring. We need to challenge hateful statements and occurrences strongly and immediately.”
George Rishfeld, Holocaust survivor
Related: Watch George Rishfeld in this video from The Breman
Ossoff shares family story
Sen. Ossoff shared a story of his family member who survived German concentration camps during World War II and later was reunited with family in the United States. “I share with you the story because I know that it echoes many of the stories in your own households and your own families,” he said “
And I think what’s sometimes lost on the rest of the world is that the industrial-scale slaughter of our people, the determined effort to exterminate us is not some ancient mythology, it’s not some lesson from deep in the history books. It’s an experience of our families. An experience within whose living memory we were raised, and within which we still live.”
Ossoff closed by saying “At this deeply painful and fraught and dangerous moment…any who wish to destroy the Jewish people will be fought and will fail again. And in the United States Senate, you have a representative fully committed to ensure that we survive.”
Other speakers at the event included Rabbi Joseph Prass from The Breman, Robyn Winnick, chair of the Yom HaShoah committee, Karen Lansky Edlin, president of Eternal Life-Hemshech, and Eric Robbins CEO of Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta.
