By Dana Noto
Irving Roth, a Holocaust survivor, remembers returning from work each evening to be ushered into a community shower. Standing naked with other prisoners, Roth would wait as a Nazi surveyed each person and determined who to let live.
“Tonight there could be a selection and I’m not going to make it,” Roth said.
Each year a different survivor speaks to students to educate them, help them ensure history doesn’t repeat and to keep the memory alive of the events that took place almost 60 years ago, said Rabbi Meir Mitelman, the Jewish Chaplain who has been holding this memorial for 15 years.
This year, Roth, a Czechoslovakian boy at the onset of the war, engrossed and impressed his audience Tuesday with his first hand account of a famous part of history.
“There’s a vividness that comes through and I think people are really inspired by this,” Mitelman said. “You could have heard a pin drop for over an hour. You can really see it on their faces that [Roth] was having a very powerful impact on the students.”
Roth discussed his memories of Jewish people being forced to wear stars on their clothing so they could be recognized whereever they traveled.
“There goes a Jew, a group separated and identified,” he said.
Roth related his experience to the terror going on today. Osama bin Laden’s threats are exactly the same as the ones once sent by Hitler, he said.
“My friends, this is not the time to sit back and wait. This is not a time to appease,” Roth said, informing the audience both Hitler and Bin Laden warned Europe not to support America or Israel.
“In every generation people rose up again. It is my hope that with God’s help we will not only survive, but we will build a stronger people,” he said. “This is what our commitment must be to the six million that died”.
Program Director Lori Hoch said it is not only Jewish people who need to learn about the Holocaust.
“This isn’t about Jewish history, but it’s a part of human history.”
Hillel’s Holocaust Awareness Week began Monday with a movie and concluded yesterday with students reading the names of the deceased from the Holocaust on South campus.