Two Holocaust survivors will speak about their experiences tonight in a ceremony in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
This event is the first in a series commemorating of Holocaust victims and survivors, hosted by the Jewish Student Union.
Ariel Hecht, president of the Jewish Student Union, said he hopes the speakers will provide a more personal perspective on the Holocaust.
“You learn so much more by hearing people’s first-hand accounts than learning about the Holocaust from a textbook or watching a movie,” Hecht said. “These speakers went through unbelievable experiences. It’s an honor to hear their stories.”
Both survivors, Freida Eisen and Max Webb, have dedicated their lives to sharing their stories with younger generations so people do not forget the horrors they faced.
“Educating and speaking about the Holocaust is the work of my life,” Eisen said.
Michelle Rapport, external vice president of the Jewish Student Union, said she believes this event is very important because there are now increasingly fewer survivors left to tell their stories.
“It’s becoming very rare to find Holocaust survivors still alive willing to tell their stories. We need to take advantage of any opportunity so we never forget,” said Rapport, a third-year Jewish studies and political science student.
Webb, now 91 years old, was in 18 different concentration camps before the war. He is now a very successful businessman and philanthropist, said Adena Schutzman, social justice chair at the Yitzhak Rabin Hillel Center for Jewish Life at UCLA.
Eisen was sent to the death camp Auschwitz in 1944 with her six siblings and parents when she was in her late teens. Only she and one of her sisters survived. She moved to the United States and had to raise her three children by herself when her husband died in 1975.
Eisen will discuss her experiences during the Holocaust and the difficulty of being a survivor.
“The Nazis didn’t just kill the (6 million Jews), they killed the survivors too. When you lose your desire to live, you lose everything. After the Holocaust, I barely existed, I was so full of pain and bitterness,” she said.
She said she searched for answers in books and poetry. She found that when she first began to talk about her personal experiences she would break down and cry, but if she read a poem about the Holocaust it was less difficult because she was not speaking about herself directly.
Eisen is now writing a book about how poetry has helped her deal with the tragedies of the Holocaust.
For Rapport, stories like Eisen’s hit close to home because both her grandparents are Holocaust survivors. She emphasized that the impact of the Holocaust does not only affect the Jewish community, but also anyone wanting to prevent genocide.
Schutzman said the Holocaust should serve as a reminder of how devastating genocide can be.
“Many people know the horrors of genocide, but genocides continue to happen. The more people know, hopefully more people will work to take action and prevent future genocides,” she said.
Though the Holocaust occurred over 60 years ago, it still deeply affects Eisen.
“I still miss my family every single day. I live with a broken heart,” Eisen said. “But no matter how hard it is, I never want to forget what happened. I want to honor my family.”