The University of Wisconsin’s Hillel Foundation commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a documentary showing Tuesday night.
Before the documentary, Hillel Rabbi Andrea Steinberger spoke to attendees.
“Today’s American political landscape feels like it has unleashed a racism that was hidden, was whispered [and] was private,” Steinberger said in the speech. “Today, the discourse in our government, our schools and our public spaces, is one of exclusion as an American ideal.”
The Ken Burns documentary “The U.S. and The Holocaust” was then shown, followed by a final discussion about the film, the modern-day impact of the Holocaust and educational opportunities for all people.
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The event was open to all students, allowing both students in the Jewish community and beyond to learn how the Holocaust impacts people today.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is an annual day of remembrance for the six million Jewish victims of the mass genocide that was the Holocaust and other victims of Nazism, according to the United States Holocaust Museum website. Students of Hillel, including Sophomore Emerson Cronheim-Strasser and Senior Savannah Lipinski, attended the event to show their respects.
“I would say that as a grandson and great-grandson to those who were killed or survived the Holocaust, it’s important to have a community that can be supportive and educate, but also provide this mutual shared experience, knowledge and understanding,” Cronheim-Strasser said.
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The film screening played part one of a three-part, six-hour series narrating how the U.S. dealt with the tragedy. It showed the interaction between American ideals and democracy and examined the different roles those ideals played in the twentieth century.
The Hillel planned the event to commemorate and bring all people, Jewish or not, together, according to UW Hillel’s Assistant Director Micah Ariel-Rohr.
For Lipinksi, the day serves as a way to invite other people to see what the community looks like.
“Judaism specifically has a day to remember the Holocaust within our own community and what is nice about International Holocaust Remembrance Day is having a day to invite people on a global level to learn and understand,” Lipinski said.
