Hello.

I'm Beryl Dakers In this special edition of Palmetto Scene, we recognize Yom Hashoah, the Holocaust day of remembrance, which commemorates the state sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of the European Jewish population by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.

Our first guest is Dr Lilly Stern Filler chair of the South Carolina council on the Holocaust and daughter of two Holocaust survivors.

Dr.

Filler what really is Yom Hashoah?

And why do you feel it's important that everyone learn about it?

Yom Hashoah is a time actually a date that has been decided upon by state governments including Israel and then adapted here in the United States to remember the Holocaust.

The Shoah which occurred in the 20th century was probably the most terrific mass mobilization of governmental agencies for the primary purpose of extermination of a group of people, particularly Jewish people.

And it included millions of others so that at the end six million Jews were exterminated because they were Jewish.

And another five to six million were murdered because of their political views, their handicaps, their religious affiliations as clergy, people who rose up against what the third Reich was doing.

All of these people were also included.

So we had a total of between eleven and twelve million people exterminated not to gain power of land, not to acquire more land, not to become governmental power in terms of politics but because of hatred and misunderstanding and being evil.

As we look back we've just commemorated the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

What were the main lessons to be learned from that?

And have we learned those lessons?

That's a good question Beryl.

I think we need to consistently ask ourselves what have we learned.

The lessons of the Holocaust are clear.

Have we learned them?

And those lessons include tolerance, empathy, understanding of others, being warmly welcome to people that we may not know.

These are all parts of what did not happen, so that the Holocaust did happen.

As the daughter of two survivors of concentration camps, what were you taught about the Holocaust and were you imbued with this sense of mission to make sure that it would never be forgotten?

My parents never talked much about the Holocaust growing up.

I became aware of the fact that we were different only when I was in about the second grade.

I had no clue that the life I was living was not lived by all, six year olds, seven year olds, five year olds.

So I noticed differences when my classmates would talk about going to grandma's house for dinner on Sundays.

And I didn't know what a grandma was.

So I went to my parents, I remember vividly, and I asked my mom, 'Let's go to grandma's house for dinner, thinking it was a restaurant or gathering place or something.'

And my mom first sat down with me and said, 'Lilly, grandma is a person, like my mom or like my father's mom and we don't have them.'

And then I realized there were things like aunts and uncles and cousins and photographs.

Photographs of people's parents when they were children.

We had none of that.

We had no photographs.

We had no aunts.

We had no uncles.

We had no cousins.

But I think that made me as an individual feel like there is a there is a lesson here that needs to be perseverated, needs to be told.

And my parents did speak out when it was probably easy for them to speak out, easier.

But that didn't come until the late 1970's and 1980's You have been very involved for the last several years with the publication of a newspaper supplement Holocaust remembered.

This year is no different.

It comes out in April and it is available.

It's available through the Free Times here in Columbia and through all of the Post and Courier markets throughout the state, although it's not in Charleston.

Charleston does their own Holocaust Remembered publication and it's located in all of the McClatchy papers in the state of South Carolina.

And its purpose is...?

To educate.

To educate and inform the public for those that did not know perhaps any Jewish people when they were growing up, or did not have any contact with Judaism or did not have any contact with history of the mid 19th 20th century and in the 1930's and 40's So it's to educate, to teach, to explain why we are remembering this period of time, why it is important to teach our children history, and then what is history supposed to do for them in terms of learning not to repeat it.

We know that if we don't learn from history, it will repeat itself.

In January 2020 at South Carolina 75th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz, the guest speaker was Elisha Wiesel.

We were able to sit down with Mr Wiesel, who is the son of Auschwitz survivor Nobel Prize laureate acclaimed author, teacher and human rights activist, the late Ellie Wiesel.

Mr Wiesel, January 27, 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of the commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz.

How important was and is that commemoration for you?

You know my father and grandfather.

Although, my father's entire family was taken to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944, by January 27th, 1945 my father and grandfather had already gone.

They had, they were on a death march from Auschwitz to Buchenwald.

They had chosen to evacuate with many other prisoners rather than stay behind in the infirmary.

I think they felt that the SS did not like loose ends.

So they made that decision.

Ten days later, they would have been liberated.

So it's a very sort of sad almost missed window.

You actually visited Auschwitz.

Yes?

We have several times.

Several times, once with my father.

What was its impact on you.

How did you feel being there?

It's... It's like nothing you can imagine.

It's a place constructed to kill human beings at scale.

It's engineered gas chambers, crematoria ovens... It's monstrous in its implications for what we're capable of with regards to each other.

To be there... You know, it's interesting.

When I went with my father, we had first visited his hometown in Romania.

And the home town in Romania had a very very profound impact on me because you saw a place where you can imagine a Jewish family living.

And there was nothing left almost.

You know, there was no trace of them.

At least in Auschwitz, you could see that a crime had occurred.

It was real.

You could see it.

It was something you could tell your children about.

For me with the eye witness testimony that we're effectively losing every day as more and more survivors pass, to go and be able to see Auschwitz in person is really something that I think people who want to immerse themselves in facts and history, should really go see for themselves.

How do you respond to those who say it was such a terrible part of our history it's best forgotten?

I think that to move forward we have to know what happened before.

The Holocaust was a singular event I do believe that never again will we see extermination on that scale aimed to really completely destroy entire people because of who they were.

But it's not the last time that we've had a genocide.

We've had nothing quite like the Holocaust.

But if you look at what happened, first of all before the Armenian genocide in Turkey, which so many civilized nations argue about recognizing was it a genocide or not.

Of course it was a genocide.

You look at what happened in Rwanda, and you say to yourself how in the world could the planet let this occur again in the wake of the Holocaust?

So of course we have to study it more.

It has to be part of mandatory education in the United States.

And I think that visits to the camp are important for those who can get there.

When you speak of Rwanda, Cambodia, Uganda, all these places we see it happening over and over again in smaller doses.

So how can we say never again, when we don't intervene, we don't do anything?

Listen, the United States is an amazing country.

We have a responsibility to the rest of the world.

and I think that most of the time, we actually do our best to live up to it.

It's not always easy, There are lives on the line when we do that.

The lives of our military, who put themselves in harm's way.

And when you think about 'What does it mean for something to be in our national interest?

', it's a very thought provoking question.

I think I am thankful and many would agree that it is our national, in our national interest to prevent genocides, because national interest isn't always about what's going to help your GDP in the next year or what's gonna help someone get re-elected.

Sometimes what acting in our national interest means, is acting in our national character.

Who do we want to be as a country?

So thank God we do have this great country that does attempt to intervene.

We don't always get it right.

We don't always get there in time.

And is there something about us, you know as a species, that makes us prone to hatred of the other?

There is, but our better angels have to get control of them.

That makes it all the more troubling then that at this current time we seem to be disavowing that national character.

We seem to be relinquishing that role as the moral leader of the world.

Listen.

We're at a very difficult time, I think in the progression of our national identity.

I think we're a divided country.

I think that extremists on both sides want to say that they have values that the other side doesn't understand.

We alternately need to come together as a country and rediscover central shared values.

And I think among them is this concept of taking care of other people.

How do you propose we do that?

(laughs) Look, there are a number of ways.

There are things we can do at the micro or the family level.

There are things we can do on the grander stage of our political construct.

You know I'm someone who advocates that we need centrists, people who can work together across different perspectives.

We're in a world right now, where it's very easy through social media to get caught up in a very narrow channel, an echo chamber where you only hear from people who think like you.

And that pushes apart.

We need political leaders who can see across the divide, who can listen to both sides and make conversation happen again, rather than wars of sound bites.

And on a more personal level, I think a lot of this has to do with the way that we raise our children.

Do we raise them to understand that there is such a thing in the world in the world as hatred.

They are likely to encounter it at some point.

It should never make them doubt themselves or you know wonder did they do something wrong?

No.

It's something that's out there and here's how to respond to it.

Here's what to do if you see it happening to someone else.

And to me so much of that when one thinks about raising a family has to do with not just combating negative behaviors, but focusing on positive behaviors and leading by example.

That's what my father did.

So much of my father's legacy, if you talk to people who knew him or had met him, it wasn't just grand speeches that he gave on a public stage.

It was how he taught kids in his classroom.

And it was how he behaved to other people.

The gracefulness with which he would interact with a taxi driver or the person cutting his hair or head of state.

He saw people as people and always wanted to hear their story.

And I think a lot about how to lead by example like that as I raise a family.

How do I raise kids who will be open to other people rather than closed?

you speak of your father who was such a prolific writer and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, professor, speaker and probably the most outspoken advocate for human rights for over 50 years for this country.

And yet for a long time your venue of influence has been the business world.

You've not been speaking out until recently now we seem to hear your voice more.

Is this a legacy that you always thought you would at some point assume?

The answer is no I didn't think that.

It's interesting my father made a very big effort to allow me the space to explore my own interests.

Programming a computer like that was never in his plan for what his son would do as part of his education.

But he gave me the space.

He didn't overload me with Holocaust conversations as a kid.

He really wanted to shelter me and let me have what he didn't have which was as normal a childhood as he could give me.

It became clear to me really I think only after he passed, what an incredible void he left, not just for me, but for so many others and I realize that as I missed him as did others, maybe there was something healing that could take place if I could at least somewhat deliver some of the messages I would think he would want to deliver, talk to some of the audiences that he would want to talk to, and engage with some of the issues that would have mattered a lot to him.

Is that a burden for you?

Growing up with my father, it felt a burden as a young person.

It was a very warm and hot at time spotlight.

It was hard to figure out how to become one's own person, when one is so closely affiliated and tied to such a grand character as my father was.

But as I got older and hopefully more mature and was able to appreciate my father more and more, appreciate him both as a father and as a figure in the world, now I'm only proud of him and wish he was still here with us.

And I still feel him in here with us.

We talk about there's quite a bit of a celebratory activity going on around the commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz and yet one has to wonder what happens when that dies down?

How do you continue the attention, the care, the remembrance?

Yeah.

I think that there's a few ways to remember the Holocaust and treat the memory of the victims with the dignity and the purpose that it deserves.

The first is to actually have an education component across this country that touches on the Holocaust.

And it doesn't have to be my father's book.

There are other books as well.

But to have that be required reading, I think is absolutely important and there are many strong groups that engage in exposing the classroom to this period in history and engaging with what it means to have hatred, not just in the Holocaust, but other periods and chapters in our countries in the world history.

Facing history is a great example of such an organization.

Then there's a second way, which is actually leading lives of positive example, not just teaching about the negative and what happens but by leading lives of positive examples.

And you have incredible organizations today, Jewish organizations, non-Jewish organizations that make it their business to help others to engage before it's too late, whether it's to show up in Darfur or whether it's the Hebrew immigrant aid society taking in refugees from the Sudan or from Iran or at the southern border.

There are so many great agencies that are doing good work and recognizing them and putting a spotlight on them and joining and supporting them is incredibly important.

And that's another way to remember the Holocaust and do good.

And the last and I think often the most profound ways how we choose to live our lives as individual as families to teach compassion just a little bit more, to be there for our kids and hold them close and give them the strength and confidence that they will need to navigate this very difficult world of ours.

That's a much more gradual and systemic kind of change.

What do we do in the meantime when we see what appears to be this burgeoning rise in racism and anti-semitism anti- anything among people who are different?

Boy, I wish I had great answers to your question.

I think it's one of the most important questions there is.

Look, hatred takes many forms I think one of the most important things we have to do is open our eyes and realize that our conception of hatred may often be too narrowly defined.

And our opportunities for engagement with others maybe too narrowly defined.

I'll explain what I mean.

Many people when they think of anti semitism in this country, they think of a right wing nationalists and extremists barging into the doors of a synagogue or a church and shooting people.

Whether it's what happened at the Mother Emanuel church or whether it's what happened you know in Poway or in Pittsburgh.

That's our conception of a hater.

You know that I think we most see in the mass media.

But there are other times, other types of hatred, as well, over our recent holiday, our past holiday of Hanukkah in December, up in New York.

Not a day went by that you weren't reading about blood on the streets from African American violence on Jews.

And that's also something significant because there's an environment now where there's anti semitism that comes from the left.

It's not just the right.

It surrounds us.

And when students are afraid to wear Stars of David on college campuses, they're afraid to be identified as Jewish, because they're gonna be demonized or ostracized by people who are spouting anti-semitism cloaked in anti-Zionism.

It's a very dangerous environment on both sides.

So we have to open our conception of the fact that anti semitism is slippery.

Hatred comes in many guises.

And we can't just have one small concept of where it is, if we're really going to make progress.

The second thing is opportunities for engagement.

What I seem to observe is that, we all engage no matter where we are in the political spectrum with purity tests with each other.

Here's the checklist of things you have to believe if I'm gonna agree with you.

And if you don't agree with these things, well it's just easy, I'm not going to talk to as much.

I'm gonna find people who match my purity test profile and these are the people I'm going to connect with.

That way of thinking isn't getting us anywhere.

And I think that that's why whether it's in the political scope, we need more people who can facilitate such dialogue, or in our personal lives.

That's ultimately the direction we need to go, urgently.

Two things there, when you talk about the African American violence in New York, whatever, then you run that slippery slope of categorizing people and having that terrible dividing line- Of course.

-spring up there.

That doesn't work, because all of a sudden it's a whole class of people that we're pitting against people who are typically supposedly allies.

But this is what haters want to do.

Look at it it's incredible.

When you think about the ally- ship between African Americans and Jews look just how far back it goes and how deep it is.

But then you realize that you know there are still people who take Louis Farrakhan seriously and his message about Satanic Jews.

Well absolutely, but what I'm trying to get at is the same thing you say about that situation can be applied to all of the other anti discriminatory questions and things.

And so it behooves us probably when you're talking about looking at the right or the left, to recognize that, we can't do this thing of expecting that there's a homogeneous belief system or activities on any side.

There's haters everywhere.

Right or left.

And there's also great people everywhere.

I mean that's what unfortunately gets lost in so much of this.

Is that for you know the truth is for every person, who is you know on the extreme right, you know, barging into a synagogue with a machine gun for every stabbing that you see you know in New Jersey in a kosher supermarket, there are incredible Americans who are doing the right thing, who are raising their families the right way who are broadcasting messages of positivity and inclusion in their churches or their synagogues or wherever it is.

But you know, if it leads it bleeds.

That's the nature of the news, right?

As we tend to see the ugly and that's what gets amplified in the media and social media particularly.

Which is why that question of what we do now to stem this.

It seems that we are tacitly encouraging by not having definitive actions against, that we are tacitly encouraging the continuation of these schisms and these horrible acts.

Listen, you know if you're looking for positive news, we can try to find some.

(laughs) I'm looking for a solutions Yeah!

I want answers.

I want I want to know that we as a people, an entire world of people can learn to respect differences and not feel threatened by the fact that we're not all just alike.

We had a great March.

And I'll tell you what really inspired me was there was a march for solidarity against anti- semitism in New York, recently.

And what impressed me most wasn't the number of Jewish people who showed up.

It was the number of non Jewish people who showed up.

And I think that the more we have of that of showing up for each other, maybe this country can get back on a path towards healing.

Reprise from the commemoration service, we leave you tonight with the Clover High School chorus and a rendition of Donna Donna.

♪ High above him there's a swallow Winging swiftly ♪ ♪ through the sky How the winds are laughing ♪ ♪ They laugh with all the their might ♪ ♪ Laugh and laugh the whole day through ♪ ♪ And half the summer's night.

♪ ♪ Donna Donna Donna Donna Donna Donna Donna Donna Don ♪ ♪ Donna Donna Donna Donna Donna Donna Donna Don ♪