Holocaust Survivor on ‘Frightening’ Anti-Semitism of Today

Stand for Israel  |  April 19, 2024

Even as the Jewish state faces threats on all sides, Jewish people around the world are also facing anti-Semitism unlike anything they’ve faced in decades. Writing at CNN, a Jewish survivor of the Dachau concentration camp—her family was rescued by Righteous Gentiles—tells of the “frightening” anti-Semitism she herself has faced, in America, in recent days:

Over the 65 years that I have called this beautiful area home, I have occasionally encountered antisemitism, but these one-off incidents never succeeded in destroying my spirit. When I was four years old, Nazis burst into my bedroom and sent me and my family to Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. We were soon released and I was smuggled out of Germany by a Christian woman. After this harrowing experience, not much in the Bay Area could scare me.

But since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the hatred towards Jews that I have seen in Berkeley terrifies me more than anything I have experienced while living here. I am still reeling from being called a liar at a Berkeley City Council meeting, where I asked for a proclamation to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day and spoke about October 7. The Jews at that meeting were circled and called “Zionist pigs” by menacing protesters.

We are approaching the holiday of Passover, which commemorates the freedom of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery and our formation as a free Jewish people in our own land. But this Passover is like no other in recent history, with scores of hostages still held in Gaza and Jews worldwide fearful for our future — including Jews in the US. We are facing the worst global antisemitism since the Holocaust and while it is not state-sanctioned as Nazism was, it is a threat going unchecked…

Read the rest of this Holocaust survivor’s gripping piece at CNN.