- A new documentary is sparking discussion across the country.

Pensacola has a lot to contribute to the conversation, including a significant connection to the Holocaust.

We'll go in-depth on this edition of "inStudio," America and the Holocaust, Pensacola Perspectives.

(upbeat music) The Holocaust, where 6 million Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazi regime of Germany, remains an important topic over 75 years later.

A new documentary, "US and the Holocaust," recently aired nationally on PBS, and locally here on WSRE.

Pensacola may not have a large Jewish population, but it is a sizeable and active one.

Later in the show, we'll hear insights from three rabbis who lead congregations in the area, but we start with Pensacola's direct connection to the Holocaust.

The local Jewish community includes several children or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, myself included.

Joining me tonight are Lori Ripps, Faye Merritt, and Andrea Fleekop, and we're going to begin the discussion with all of us sharing our powerful testimony about how the Holocaust affected our families.

So, Lori, we'll start with you.

I know both of your parents are Holocaust survivors.

Please share what they went through.

- Thank you.

Yes, both of my parents were from Poland.

They were young during that time.

My mother was the youngest of six children.

And in her hometown of Bedzin, there were about 28,000 Jews at the time when the war broke out in 1939.

In 1941, they were taken from their homes to a ghetto.

And in 1942, my mother and her sister were taken, along with their mother, to a soccer field where there was a selection.

This is a photo of my mother with her family.

This is her, the youngest child with the white bow in her hair.

My grandmother is seated to her left.

The woman in behind my mother to the right is her sister, and next to them are two brothers.

There were two other brothers that were already in Canada from before the war, and those are the ones that are in the photos that they're holding.

My grandfather is seated to my grandmother's left.

Anyway, my mother and her sister and my grandmother were taken to a soccer field where they were selected to go to a concentration camp.

This was in 1942.

And unfortunately that was the last time that they ever saw their mother and the brothers.

They were forced onto trucks.

They were forced to watch the crowd shooting.

The German soldiers, the Nazis, were shooting into the crowd, and they saw their mother go down, which, they thought that she had died.

In fact, they found out later that she had survived that selection only for three weeks later for the entire remaining ghetto to be liquidated and everybody taken to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.

My mother and her sister managed to survive together in a concentration camp called Peterswaldau.

And there they worked in a factory, where they were forced to sew uniforms for the Hitler Youth and repair Nazis uniforms.

Peterswaldau was a sub camp of the Gross-Rosen system.

Later on, after the war, they managed to survive together and were liberated in the spring of 1945.

My father was from a small town called Pinczow.

He was the oldest of six children, and he was the only survivor of his entire family.

This is a picture of him as the youngest child.

He was the oldest of six.

I mean this is him at a young age.

That was a younger sister, and then, of course, there were four children after that, with my grandparents and a great grandmother.

He was the only survivor of the family, as I told you.

When he was 17, when the war broke out.

Well, when the German soldiers were approaching his hometown, he begged his parents to go into the woods with him.

He was kind of running around with some partisans.

He was young and strong, and he wanted to escape into the woods, and he tried to take his whole family with him.

But my grandparents couldn't imagine taking all these children into the woods, and so they stayed behind.

And the next day the town was occupied by the Germans.

And ultimately, my father's whole family was taken Treblinka and murdered in Treblinka.

My father managed to survive in the woods for a while, ended up in a concentration camp, was caught and was taken to a concentration camp called Plaszow, outside of Krakow, and ultimately escaped and then was captured again and taken to Buchenwald, where he worked in a munitions factory and was ultimately liberated and survived the war.

- Well, thank you for sharing, Lori.

Faye, we'll turn to you next.

I know both of your parents also Holocaust survivors.

Please share their story.

- Thank you.

My mother and father were both from Poland, and they were from different cities, different parts of Poland.

So their stories were a little different.

Well, both my parents were probably in their late twenties around the time that Hitler started coming to power.

My mother was working in Krakow.

My mother was from a little town called Chobienia, and it was outside of Krakow.

But she went to a business high school, and lived with an aunt and uncle and cousins, and she actually was working in an office.

And one day she was going to work, and they said, "Didn't you hear that they bombed Chobienia?"

And she immediately went home, and she found out that her brothers were taken into the Polish army, and so it was her and her sister and her parents.

And one day they were told to come to the town square, and they separated the parents from my mother and her sister, and they never saw their parents again.

And that was not very far from Auschwitz.

So the assumption was that they perished in Auschwitz.

My mother and her sister went to also a slave labor camp.

It was called Ober Altstadt.

It was part of Gross-Rosen in Czechoslovakia.

And there, they worked on machinery that turned flax seed, like cotton, into yarn.

And they didn't know anything about machinery and how to do this, but every day they had a quota, they had a norm they had to make, a certain count that they had to do each day.

And if the machines didn't work or the yarns got caught in the machines, they had to figure out how to fix these things.

Somehow they made it through that for three-and-a-half years.

They were given a loaf of hard bread, to last them a week, to eat.

My mother was given two left shoes.

She never dared to ask somebody to get a right shoe because you never dared to speak up of anything.

Also toward the end of the time they were there, my aunt got typhus, so my mother had to try to do her sister's portion of the work also.

Thank God she survived, and they were liberated May of 1945.

And when they were, it was American, British and Russian soldiers that all came the same day and liberated their camp.

And then my father was from another part of Poland that was closer to the Russian border.

And he and his father and two brothers and a sister went to Siberia.

I don't know as much about his story, but they were also in some sort of a labor camp.

And my father was strong, and tried to take care of his father.

And he had a sister who was disabled.

So somehow the family that was in Russia survived.

His city was called Czmoniec, Poland.

Anyone of the family, their mother, my grandmother, and there was two other older brothers that were married and had children, none of those survived.

- Thank you, Faye.

Andrea, you are the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, but I know you know their stories well.

Can you share their stories, please?

- Sure.

So my mother's parents were survivors.

So my grandfather, Joseph Reichmann, is from Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland.

During the war, he was in Schlieben camp in Germany.

And he was from a big family, a religious family, and the only one from his immediate family to survive.

We know that his mother and his youngest brother were murdered in Treblinka.

My grandfather wanted to be a dentist, and he was studying, but the war broke out.

And later in life, he became a dental technician.

During the war, he was part of the underground partisans.

I think he spent some time in the woods as well.

He was a strong Zionist.

Right there on the screen is actually his paper from Germany after he was liberated from the DP camp in Leipzig, Germany.

He did have some cousins who survived, who later immigrated to Israel.

Like I said, he was a Zionist, so he wanted to go with them, but his new mother-in-law, my great-grandmother, who survived, said that they had had enough trouble and they were going to America, the Golden Medina.

But they stayed in touch with those cousins who went to Israel, and to this day, I stay in touch with them, as well as the rest of my family, and we've visited each other, and it's beautiful to watch the generations continue to grow from what was.

My grandmother survived the war with her mother.

They were in different places in Poland.

My grandmother, Doris Reichmann, she grew up in Lodz, Poland.

She was an only child, and her parents owned a household goods store.

I know a little bit more about my grandmother because she's still alive.

She's 98, and her memory is still good.

So the war broke out in 1939.

She was 15 years old, and that was the end of her formal schooling.

I have a daughter right now who's 14, so it's pretty amazing to think that was the age that she was when she was done in school.

The Germans came and they took away all Jewish-owned businesses, and they seized any finances and bank accounts.

And she says that they were forced to move from their apartment to Pabianice ghetto in 1940.

And she describes that one day, they had them go to what she calls a flea market, and that's where they did the separation or the selection.

Older people one way, and adults who they viewed as useful another way.

The older people were sent to their death at Majdanek, a death camp.

She remembers at night, they came for the children, and she was 15, so that was kind of about the cutoff.

She remembers hiding in the dark, because it was nighttime, and she managed to be okay at that point.

So from Pabianice ghetto, they went to the Lodz ghetto.

Another selection, where she describes they were forced to be naked and their bodies were inspected, particularly their arms, to see who was strong enough to handle the slave labor.

And if you were not, you were sent to Majdanek or to Auschwitz.

And if you were strong enough, they sent you to labor camps in Germany, which is where my grandmother and great grandmother were deemed strong enough, and they were sent to work at a German ammunition parts factory near Leipzig, Germany.

She describes that they didn't know what would happen day to day.

It was a very scary way to live.

They worked 12 hours a day.

And they had to march from where they worked to where they slept, and it was six kilometers, no matter the weather.

They slept in barracks on wooden beds.

They were each given two blankets, so my grandmother describes that she and her mother put two blankets on the bottom, two blankets on the top, and they slept together.

They were then sent to Auschwitz, where they stayed for nine months.

When they got there, they did another separation.

That was the last time she saw her father.

They were also in Bergen-Belsen and Dachau, and she was liberated from Dachau.

She remembers the day, April 30th, 1945, her day of freedom, by the American soldiers.

From there, she went to a DP camp, which is where she met my grandfather.

They stayed there in Germany for about three years, and then they were blessed to have family in the United States and were able to get papers and come in 1948.

- Thank you, Andrea.

Well, my dad was also a Holocaust survivor.

His story is more of being on the run from the Germans.

He was from Greece, from the city of Salonika, which is the second largest city in Greece.

It had a very big Jewish population at that time.

In 1940, he was 13 years old.

This is a picture of the family shortly after his bar mitzvah.

That's my dad on the bottom left, Sam Nissim.

He was 13.

And a few months after this photo was taken in April of 1941, the German army entered Greece and they were headed towards Salonika.

And my dad was a very headstrong kid.

He listened to the news, read the papers.

He knew that the Germans hated Jews.

They treated them badly, they put them to work.

And he was like, "Well, they're not going to treat me badly.

They're not going to put me to work."

So he was determined to leave and get out of there before the Germans arrived.

Of course, he knew his parents would never let him do this.

It was kind of a crazy idea just to kind of go off on your own.

So he did not tell them what he was doing.

And he went down to the port and he was able to sneak onto a ship going to Athens.

He literally jumped on a rope and climbed onto the ship.

He got on the ship, sailed to Athens.

A few days after he left, the Germans did arrive in Salonika and took over the city.

So in Athens, he got some help from some adults.

After about a month there, the Germans were advancing again, and he and a guy in his twenties that he had met there, they were able to get on a ship to go to Crete, which is in the south of Greece, and they were there for about a month or two.

And then after they left Athens, a couple of days after that, the Germans did arrive in Athens and took over Athens.

Same scenario in Crete.

They knew the Germans would be coming eventually.

They had kind of buddied up with military people there, the British military, and the plan was at some point they were going to get on this convoy that was going to Cairo, to Egypt.

And one particular day where they didn't think that the ships were leaving, they walked a few miles out of town.

While they were there, somebody they had met since they had been there said, "You know those ships you want to get on?

They're leaving, like, right now."

So they were frantic.

They ran back towards the dock.

My dad jumped in front of a truck filled with furniture, almost got run over.

You know, they jumped on the side of the truck.

The guy got him down as quick as he could to the dock.

When they got there, the ships were off the dock, but hadn't left yet.

They rode out to a ship, were able to get on a ship.

Half hour after that the ships actually left for Cairo.

And a few days after that, the Germans did start attacking Crete and took over Crete.

So he gets the Cairo, and there's a large Jewish population there.

And he went to see the Jewish population, told them his story.

He was 13 years old, he's been running from the Germans on his own.

They were amazed by it.

And they asked him, "Do your parents know where you are?

Do they have any idea you're alive?"

And he said, "No."

So they arranged for him to send a telegram to his dad's restaurant.

His dad owned a restaurant in Salonika.

And at that time the Germans took over Salonika, but they were not yet persecuting the Jews so the telegram got through, and he found out that his dad was giving out free food and drinks to everybody upon finding out that his son was still alive and where he was.

They sent him a telegram back saying that the family loves you and embraces you.

And he said that that made him cry.

He said up until then he had been pretty tough.

So he lives in Cairo for the next year or so, relatively okay.

Help from the Jewish population, they helped him out.

Then the Germans were advancing in North Africa.

There was fear they were going to get the Cairo, and he was like, "Well, I'm not going to let him get me now."

So again, you know, it's a long story.

He didn't have a passport or anything, but he was able to sneak on a ship again to get out.

At this point, he's 14, maybe 15.

And he took a ship to Kenya, and then he went to Belgian Congo eventually, and then he went to South Africa, everywhere just getting help.

Finding help from adults or the Jewish community, or buddying up to military, just whatever he had to do to kind of get by.

Eventually the war's turning, Germans were losing.

They never actually got to Cairo.

He worked his way back up there, finished out the war in Cairo.

War ends in 1945.

It was not until early 1946 that he was able to get back to Salonika, and he found out what happened to his family.

A few months after the Germans took over, they did, in fact, started taking the homes away from Jews, and the businesses away from Jews, and made them live in a ghetto.

And two years after they had initially arrived in 1943, they deported all the Jews of Salonika to Auschwitz.

And he found out that when they got there, he talked about the selections.

His mom and his dad and his little sister were all murdered immediately.

They were taken to the gas chambers and the crematoria.

Three of his brothers were sent to slave labor.

At one point, two of his brothers were shot, two of his older brothers.

His youngest brother was seen shortly before liberation, but was never seen again.

So he died at his Auschwitz as well.

He had one brother, his oldest brother, survived.

He had gotten away before they were deported, and survived, fighting with the Greek resistance in the mountains.

Out of his whole extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins, he had one cousin that made it back from Auschwitz.

And that's how he learned a lot of the little details.

And out of Salonika's Jewish population, there was about 56,000 before the war, before the Germans came, less than 2,000 survived.

And my dad was one of those.

So I'm very thankful that he found a way to survive.

Obviously, all these are powerful stories.

They're not the only ones in the Pensacola area, there are several other ones.

One of them, Dan Hecht, he joined us on a panel discussion recently and gave the testimony of how his mom survived the Holocaust, and we're going to take a look at his story right now.

- When she was born in Lithuania, when she was about five years old, that's when they were forced to go into the Kovno ghetto, my mother, living with her parents and a grandmother in one small apartment.

And I think my mother's childhood was really that of hiding.

Every story I hear from my mom was, you know, being wrapped up in a mattress to hide as Germans searched for kids.

Being hidden under the stairs all day long, trying not to cough while she was being sought for.

Eventually being hidden in a potato sack.

So to tell that part of it, when my grandparents realized they wanted to do everything they could to save my mom, they came up with a scheme where my grandfather reached out to someone he knew.

My grandfather had been the principal of a school.

And there was another principal he knew that he reached out to and asked if he would take my mother into hiding.

And while this gentleman said he thought the Jews deserved what they were getting, he thought my grandfather was different, and so he agreed.

Not the most confidence-building situation to be in.

But they worked this out where my mother practiced, as a six year old, hiding in a potato sack because my grandmother would leave the ghetto every day to work in the fields.

They were forced to work, and she'd carry tools.

And so instead of tools that day, she put my mother in the bag and carried her out... and left her at the side of the road where someone else was supposed to come get her.

Again, think about how you'd feel as a mother doing that.

Fortunately, it worked.

A person, who was supposed to, got my mother, brought her to the other family, and she stayed there through the duration of the war.

Also, still never so confident or inspired while she was there, but it worked.

Shortly after, the Kovno ghetto was liquidated.

So all the Jews that were there, who were remaining there, were forced out, or put on trains to go to labor camps.

My grandparents were on a cattle car train together.

And again, thinking about my mother, saying what can they do to make sure one of them would survive to find her, is they thought it was better to split up.

And they decided one of them would jump out of the train.

My grandmother didn't want to do it, so my grandfather did.

And he jumped out of the moving train, you know, fell from a distance from the window, and when he woke up, 'cause he was knocked out, there was a Lithuanian farmer there who was going to play his own Nazi role and try to take my grandfather in, 'cause he was asking for his papers or credentials.

And my grandfather figured, no harm in this.

Just run as fast as you could.

And I guess he kept running for several months, hiding in the woods, hiding in barns, hiding through the countryside, and kind of later, much later, captured some of this as an essay where he said miracles that happened to me.

You know, the choices he made, and the luck that he also survived.

My grandmother continued on the train, was in a labor camp, worked there.

Was under, obviously, horrible conditions, but also managed to survive.

So I think similar to what Lori said, both my grandmother and my grandfather had five siblings.

Each of them had five siblings who were involved in the Holocaust, and they were the only ones who survived, my grandmother, my grandfather, and my mother.

Somehow they were able to get reunited after the war.

We didn't have communication like we do now, but my grandfather, of course, could go and find where my mother was.

And through his one brother, who had lived in Switzerland, they were able to write letters and then find all three of them to be reunited.

And I thought this was important 'cause I think for my mother, it's very proud for her to say she has three kids, she has eight grandkids, and she often says, "You know, Hitler would be rolling over in his grave."

And I guess it's the message that to save one life, you're saving many.

Also even at the times of greatest joy, my mother remembers the Holocaust.

And that's sad, but it's true.

- Powerful testimony.

We thank Dan for that.

That was from a panel discussion we did before the documentary here at WSRE.

You know, you talk about the Holocaust.

We're talking about it right now.

Some Holocaust survivors would talk about it readily, some did not want to talk about it at all.

I know my dad, he was very quick to talk about it.

He would tell anybody that would listen what happened to him.

He wanted people to know what happened to him, what happened to his family.

And then in turn, as I've gotten older, I know it's important for me to be able to carry on that story.

Initially, I was more of a private person, but I've realized that this is really important for me to tell the story as often as possible so people know what happened.

How about your families?

Faye, how about your parents?

How open were they in talking about their Holocaust experience?

- My mother didn't ever want to talk about it when I was growing up.

She really suffered from depression on and off in her life, and later on, I think it was more like post traumatic stress disorder.

She didn't want to talk about anything until "Schindler's List" came out.

And when "Schindler's List" came out, there was a lot of publication, lot of publicity about...

They were saying the survivors needed to tell the story.

Even though it was painful, they needed to tell the story because there are people that might say that it didn't ever happen.

And so at that point, which was maybe 25 years ago, 20 years ago, then she would speak at some of the schools.

But she never wanted to speak to adults.

I think might be intimidated on what kind of questions they might ask.

And it got to be very painful when she had to talk about it.

Now, for my father, my father's situation was a little different.

When I was younger, he wanted to speak about it a little bit.

But then I think because my mother had such pain, he subdued and he didn't talk about it that much.

Because his situation was very different than my mother's.

I think in Russia, they were in Siberia, they were trying to survive, but they weren't under the Nazi guards, the SS, like my mother and her sister were.

So it wasn't until they were older.

My mother was older.

My father passed away a long time ago.

But I think in a way it might have been a little healing for her to let it out, to talk about it.

- Andrea, how about you?

I know you talked about your grandmother still talks about it.

- Yes, she does.

And my mother was just telling me recently, my grandmother had a little fall and so she was in the hospital.

And every time a new nurse would come in, the first thing my grandmother would say was, "I'm a survivor," meaning I'm a Holocaust survivor, and Hitler didn't get me, and so whatever ailment I'm dealing with, I will be okay.

And so that's, to this day, how she identifies herself.

She's strong, she's feisty, she's determined, and those are the attributes that kept her alive.

And she's still that way to this day.

- Lori, how about your parents?

How open were they to talking about it?

- I think I was very fortunate that both of my parents were very open about talking about their experiences.

I grew up in Philadelphia, in a very large survivor community, many survivors living there.

Whenever they were socially together, all the survivors would talk about it.

My mother and her sister, they would talk about it a lot.

I think there were a couple of reasons, that may have been even subconscious, but I think, as you mentioned, it was kind of healing for them.

They were kind of young and resilient, and starting out new lives, and I think that was partly their way of working through it.

And when we were young, it was just part of our everyday conversation.

It was also a way for them to honor the people that... the relatives that did not survive.

They liked talking about their families, and so in order to talk about their families, they had to talk about those experiences.

And I think that was very important to them.

And it was also a way to impart those stories into our lives so that we would tell the stories as we got older.

And my parents spoke publicly a lot.

They were often invited to speak to groups in schools and churches.

And I don't know how much they actually...

I think they enjoyed doing that.

I mean, like Faye mentioned, it was painful, but they did do that.

And I try to do that as well, to continue to tell the story, because it's just so important for those reasons.

- Yeah.

My dad talked about it a lot, but he had a lot of bitterness and anger.

It was not happy.

And he lived a lot of years.

He had some happy times, but he was not a happy person.

I mean, the guilt and anger was with him forever.

It was hard to have him as a dad, but really the beneficiary of him surviving is me and my children.

We have life, and we don't have that bitterness and anger.

But it's still important for us to talk about it.

This discussion is being sparked by the documentary which is about the US and the Holocaust, and America's response and that lack thereof, you know, to the Holocaust.

But of course, all of our families came to America and found a haven here.

Faye, how did your family end up coming to America?

- My parents met in Stuttgart, Germany.

They called it the American zone.

And it probably was a displaced person's camp.

My mother's brother had met my father and introduced my mother and father.

And by that time, they were in their mid thirties and they were ready to get on with life.

Back then, mid thirties, you would've probably been almost grandparents because people got married when they were 19, 20.

And they were ready to get on with life, and they got married.

My father wanted to go to the United States, but really they wanted to go anywhere they could get a visa to go to.

My mother's older sister and older brother wanted to go to Israel because they were in the Zionist youth organization as youngsters, and that was their dream to go there.

My mother, of course, wanted to be with with her sister, and they...

I'm sorry.

My parents would send packages to her sister in Israel because they had a baby.

And my father said, "Well, if we go to Israel, who's going to send us packages?"

I mean, they had nothing.

So eventually they got to the United States through an organization called HIAS, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

And without HIAS, HIAS helped them with paperwork, helped them with settling.

And they went to Detroit, Michigan first, because that's where my father's brother was there six months earlier, and HIAS helped them find a job.

My father worked on one of the assembly lines in Detroit.

He didn't know anything about vehicles, but I think he said the Korean War was going on then and they needed workers.

And HIAS helped my parents.

My mother was seven months pregnant when they came to the United States, and HIAS helped them find an apartment, my father a job.

They took care of all my mother's medical.

And there was very strict medical exams everybody had to have in order to come to the country.

They wouldn't take anyone elderly or infirm.

So my father's father was older, he was probably around 80.

And my aunt had a disability so she couldn't come.

So they were left behind.

But they were thankful that they could come to the United States.

- Yeah, my dad also, he lived in Salonika for a few more years, but he really didn't feel like there was a life for him there anymore.

And also was, I don't know if it was HIAS, but I know an organization that helped Holocaust survivors come to America helped him come to America.

And he ended up settling in New York, and met my mom, and they had me.

Lori, how about you?

I know it was kind of a winding road for your family.

- Yeah.

Both my parents were in displaced persons camps, separate camps, they didn't know each other at that time, for two years.

My mother was in Deggendorf, and my father in a camp called Zeilsheim.

My mother, she was with her sister, who got married in the displaced persons camp.

And then my mother had two brothers that were in Canada from before the war.

They had gone over to try to get paperwork to bring the rest of the family over, and that never came to fruition.

And so my mother, from Germany, went to Canada after the war to reunite with her brothers.

She got reunited with them through a US Army chaplain.

And then my father independently came over to Canada as well.

They had difficulty getting in on a US quota, so they were able to get into Canada.

And then my mother was traveling to see her sister who had been able to get into Philadelphia, into the United States, and she went through Toronto and met my father there.

And then ended up in Philadelphia.

So kind of the short of it.

- So it wasn't easy, but they got here.

And your family also was able to make it here?

- Yeah.

So my great grandmother, for whom I'm named, she had a sister who was here, and so it was via her that they got papers to be able to come to New Jersey.

And it wasn't an easy transition, but everybody worked hard and they were just very thankful to be alive.

And my grandmother, I think there's a photo of her, she became a baby nurse, because babies didn't require you to speak English and she didn't have English when they moved to the United States.

And so that's what she was able to do.

- All right.

Well, ladies, thank you so much for being here, spending your time and sharing your stories.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- After a quick break, we'll be joined by three rabbis who lead congregations in the Pensacola area.

You're watching "inStudio" on WSRE PBS for the Gulf coast.

Welcome back to "inStudio."

Tonight's topic, the Holocaust and America, Pensacola Perspectives.

Our discussion sparked by the recently aired documentary by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, "US and the Holocaust."

Pensacola enjoys a sizeable and robust Jewish community, and proof of that is in this room right now.

Three rabbis who lead congregations in the area.

Rabbi Joel Fleekop, who is the spiritual leader at Temple Beth El.

We also have Rabbi David Cohen-Henriquez from Bnai Israel Synagogue, and Rabbi Mendel Danow from Chabad Center of Pensacola.

So we're talking about the Holocaust here tonight.

How often is the Holocaust something that's talked about in your congregations, and how important is it to keep this conversation going?

Rabbi Joel, I'll start with you.

- Yeah, I think it'd be really hard to overstate the importance of the Holocaust in American Jewish life.

I think it's either explicitly or implicitly part of almost every conversation we have.

Growing up, it was part of my religious education.

Just as we studied ancient Jewish history and Torah and the Bible, we studied the Holocaust.

And, you know, for myself and for many other kids who grew up in America, bearing witness to the Holocaust by visiting Poland and the camps there is part of one's upbringing.

- Yeah.

Rabbi David, how about you?

How often is it talked about, and how important is it to keep talking about it?

- No matter how much we speak, I don't think it's enough.

It is something that has to be definitely always in our minds, in our hearts.

We do learn, especially with the children as they're old enough to understand, according to their ways.

But also ritually.

We have landmark moments in the Jewish calendar where we pause and remember our dearly departed beloved ones.

And there's always specific prayers that are exclusive for those who perished in the Shoah, in the Holocaust.

That also includes Yom HaShoah, and also in the observance of the secular day that was established to remember the Holocaust.

- Rabbi Mendel, How about you?

How much do you talk about it?

- So definitely the Holocaust is always a very fundamental part of Jewish upbringing in the 21st century.

And definitely we educate our children.

We want to expose them to the atrocities of what happened, and most importantly, to hear the stories, to read the books to understand what happened.

But then there comes the other side of the stick, so to speak, where we want to give our children and the new generation to understand that, you know, as a Jew, we have our identity and we should be proud of it, and not, God forbid, you know, shy away from it because of what happened.

There is a great line, which is, you know, "Being hated is not an identity."

Where we always have to understand, on the one hand, the past of what happened, but then we also have to very much focus on the future and rebuilding of the Jewish world and community.

- In the first half of the show we heard from children of Holocaust survivors.

Rabbi Mendel, your family also was affected by the Holocaust.

- So actually my great, great parents, they perished in the Holocaust, and my great grandparents, they managed to escape.

- [Steve] Where was that?

- So they were coming from Germany and Poland.

Both my great grandmother and great grandfather individually, they escaped and ended up on a boat to Israel, and they met on the ship.

And they came to Israel, and my grandfather was born there, and unfortunately my great-grandfather passed away in Israel.

This is in the early '40s.

And so he was born an orphan.

You know, so he had a very... you know, he was an only child.

And then ultimately he, together with his mother, came to Great Britain, and he grew up over there.

And he made it a point to fill in the loss of all his uncles and aunts and grandparents who had perished in the Holocaust, and ultimately had 11 children.

And most of his children have many children.

I'm one of 12, and the oldest.

And God willing, we want to continue that to rebuild the Jewish nation.

- Of course, the documentary that's sparking this discussion was about US and the Holocaust.

Kind of a mixed bag in terms of the US reaction.

Certainly some good.

It was a haven for a lot of people.

But also there was antisemitism and also they didn't do as much as maybe they could have done.

I'm curious as to your experiences as living as Jews in America.

And specifically Rabbi David, I know you were born in Panama, so I'm curious as to what was it like, what was the attitude towards Jews there compared to what it is here?

- So Panama has always been very tolerant and friendly to all minorities and diversity.

Actually, as a fun fact, Panama is the only country outside of Israel who's had two Jewish presidents.

We do know that there's always, although never aggressively, never very publicly proclaiming antisemitism, you know, especially because of the Catholic church in the past having some tropes about Jews, and sometimes people repeat them from generations to generations.

Although I never had encounters that were aggressive, never saw a swastika painted on a wall, or never saw a manifestation, people walking with torches or anything like that.

However, I do remember being a nine-year-old, and a little friend I was playing with, he's not Jewish.

He's like, "Oh, you guys killed Jesus."

I don't recall that, but let me ask because I really don't know.

So it's little things like that that existed.

Nowadays, I've been out of the country for almost 20 years.

I do know that social media has brought different, more aggressive, or at least you don't know who's saying it so you say it, or at least you don't know how many people you're saying it to, that's the danger of tweeting or posting things online.

So that has brought, again, some antisemitic tropes, but nothing that becomes manifested on the public arena, at least.

And even to this day, decisions never, ever affected the Jewish community politically, and actually Panama is a very good friend of the state of Israel.

Very good partners.

- Rabbi Mendel, you grew up in Sweden.

What was it like for Jews there?

- So actually growing up in Sweden was a very interesting relationship in regards to Jewish people in the community.

I mean, there were a lot of Holocaust survivors who were in Sweden.

Sweden was a neutral country during the war, and many Jewish people ended up coming there.

So that was definitely a part of growing up.

But in regards to Swedes, Swedes are generally very reserved people.

They don't really tell you what they think of you, for the good or for the better.

But unfortunately there were occurrences of high antisemitism that we experienced growing up as a child.

There was a time when we went for an art lesson at an art place, and there were people banging on the door and saying, "Give us the Jews and we're going to stone them."

And we had to escape through a back door and run away.

And occurrences like that, not that I would say, thank God, that I'm scarred by it, but it's definitely, you know, something which I grew up on and is something to keep in mind.

But thank God, coming here to America, I can say I've been here for 15 years in the United States and have had only positive experiences, especially in Pensacola.

I never tell someone that I'm Jewish, and, you know, I look Jewish walking around.

Only compliments, only positivity.

You know, people saying, "Oh, I love the Jews.

I love Israel," so on and so forth.

Maybe even wanting to join my congregation.

I have to tell them, "Well, you know..." - Well, Rabbi Joel, you have a full Jewish American experience.

You've lived in different parts of the country.

You grew up out west.

What has the experience been like, you in different parts of the country and coming to the south living as a Jew in America?

- Yeah, so growing up in Nevada was a similar size Jewish community to Pensacola.

You know, there's one or two instances where I recall from my youth of somebody who painted a swastika on part of the temple building, incidents like that.

But what stands out even more was the response of the neighbors.

I remember the temple in Reno that I grew up at was actually right across the street from where the university football coach lived at the University of Nevada.

And one time having, you know, some of the players come out and help paint over some of the antisemitic graffiti that had been placed there.

And that sense of support, that's been true throughout my experience, that yes, there's hatred everywhere.

But there's also a lot of support and kindness.

And I think within the Jewish community too, that's one of the really important lessons that when we talk about the Holocaust is that when we say, "Never again," it's not just about the Jewish community.

It's about standing in solidarity with other oppressed groups, about fighting hatred anywhere.

You know, I remember growing up, going to a protest against some of the events that were happening in the former Yugoslavian republics, some of the acts of genocide there.

And that was seen within the Jewish community as a religious act, to be there in solidarity with our Muslim neighbors.

And I think that that's a really important part of what it meant to grow up in the Jewish community.

Yes, there was antisemitism, but there was solidarity, and in turn, there was a sense of an obligation to be there with others as well.

- Yeah.

So there's a lot of good, but also there has been a rise in antisemitism in recent years.

So Rabbi David, how much of a concern is that, and how do you handle that?

- So I want to repeat what the Rabbi said.

Pensacola, I've experienced a very positive, almost feel of Semitism and admiration and love everywhere I go.

However, before being here, I was living in the North Shore in Massachusetts.

And for the past seven to eight years, there was an increase of activities, of manifestations.

And a lot of times it was close to high schools.

So it's interesting.

It's a new generation perhaps desensitized or removed from the reality where they think it's okay to write swastikas, not only on the high school or on the football fields, but also even synagogues were vandalized with graffiti or stickers.

Now, it's interesting who is doing the antisemitism also.

As an immigrant to this country, immigration is fantastic, for it's the heart of this nation, but also we sometimes come with our baggage from different countries.

And a lot of times people are coming from Middle East or from Eastern Europe with heavy antisemitism that is sometimes endemic in their cultures.

And a lot of these cases, interesting enough, had been done by people who perhaps had not gone yet through the fully embracing American experience.

Doesn't mean that there's not few generations old Americans who had antisemitism as well, but it was something that the people had.

So mainly new generations, and sometimes people who had different opinions of us.

- Yeah.

Rabbi Mendel, I mean, you have experienced good things, but I know you've seen some of the antisemitism out there.

How concerning is it to you?

- Well, it's definitely a concern, and we obviously have to take security measures to keep our center safe for all the people who are coming and want to celebrate their Judaism.

We don't want anyone to feel fearsome of coming or anything like that, God forbid.

But I think one of the important ideas that has to be addressed here is, of course, you know, we're talking about the Holocaust, but then there's also the cause.

Where did this come from, and where is this stemming from?

And if we're looking back in history at Germany back in the '30s, it was this really progressive country with very smart people, great professors, and innovation.

But at the same time as all of this is taking place, they are able to very easily just come along and say, "Oh yeah, well, these 6 million people, they should just die.

We don't need them."

And, you know, that contradiction, how is it possible?

And I would say that, you know, if we think of every individual, every human being in the world as being created in the image of God, so then it doesn't matter what color, race, country, or nationality the person might come from, who they are, they are created by God and ultimately they have a purpose in this world the same way I or you have a purpose in this world.

And that's definitely, I would say, a very defining factor that the cultural...

The cultural consensus of do not murder, do not steal and so on and so forth, if we only do them because society says that that's the right thing to do, well, then, if society changes its mind at some point, well, then, things that we're not allowed at one point are suddenly encouraged.

And, you know, so if we have that foundation, I would say, an ethical compass, to show us that what is the right way.

That's essentially, as a rabbi, you know, in the Jewish belief, we believe in God, of course.

And that is the, you know, 10 commandments.

Don't steal, don't kill, that's something which should navigate us when coming to conclusions of how we should interact with the world around us.

- Rabbi Joel, what's your take?

- Yeah.

You mentioned changes in society.

For a long time, there's been a belief, especially throughout the second half of the 20th century, that America was a great place, perhaps the best place in the 2,000 year history of the diaspora to be a Jew.

And there's a fear that my kids are going to experience more antisemitism than I did.

A well founded fear.

And I think part of that is because being antisemitic, whether that's coming from the right, or the left, or from whichever groups.

For a long time in America, that was very much unacceptable.

Part of that might stem from the events of the Holocaust and the perception that the Nazis, who were the enemies of America, were antisemitic, and so being antisemitic was anti-American.

But I worry that it's less unfashionable to be antisemitic today.

That things that maybe people...

I don't know if they felt them, but they definitely didn't feel it was comfortable to say them aloud.

But now because of changes in society, because of the internet, because of other things that more and more of that is being given voice.

And absolutely this increase in antisemitism is very concerning.

You know, you mentioned high school, Rabbi David.

So my kids are in middle school and high school now.

And for the most part, they're friends and their community are very supportive.

But I do think that there's...

I worry for them.

And I worry about not just what their friends at school are going to say, but what they're going to encounter on the internet especially.

- I just want to add one more thing.

Synagogues have what we could call a hate tax.

Part of our budget is... A lot of our budget, too much of what we would want to, is spent on security.

Our synagogue just spent, I think, 14 security cameras, and we're installing new security doors and all kinds of high tech to keep us protected.

Although it is, as I mentioned before, I don't want to contradict myself.

But although I feel wonderful and safe as a Jew, you can never just open the doors 'cause you never know.

One day somebody has a disgruntled morning and let's go and get the scapegoat, right?

Let's go get some Jews.

And that's sadly not only happening in synagogues.

Talking now with people of other faiths and you've experienced the last few years shootings, mass shootings in churches.

And then in a way it's like welcome to the world of how Jews have lived for the past few, sometimes decades in some places.

- Of course, you know, you guys have lived here in Pensacola, and we have a sizable Jewish community.

I mean, you wouldn't call it a large community, but people that don't know, they might be surprised, you know, three rabbis in Pensacola?

Yes, and you all have robust congregations.

Rabbi Joel, you've been here the longest.

What's been your kind of impression of the Jewish community, the history of it, and what it is now in Pensacola?

- Yeah.

So it's a really rich history.

Pensacola is Florida's oldest Jewish community, and it's also a really proud Jewish community.

It's a community that's proud to be Jewish, and a community that's also really proud about its impact and its influence on the city of Pensacola and the region.

To have had mayors, to have had leaders in the community, to have business leaders to play a really important role in building our community, and still play at that important role in building our community and our institutions.

Yeah, I think it's part of the American Jewish experience to both be proud to be Jewish, and to be proud about the role that you can play in America.

Because for a much of of Jewish history, Jews, wherever they were, didn't have that opportunity to play those roles, to be part of society.

You know that my grandfather came to America from Ukraine, and would've never thought of himself as Ukrainian.

And his neighbors never thought of him as Ukrainian either.

That was part of the problem.

That's part of why he came to America as a young boy after a pogrom, after an outburst of anti-Jewish violence.

And so to be part of a community that's so well integrated and welcomed is really wonderful.

- Rabbi Mendel, how about you?

What's been your impression of the Jewish community here?

- So actually I find that a lot of Jewish people are very open about their Judaism, and I think that's an extremely positive thing, and I would say, would reflect the American Jew of today, of the 21st century, where we're not scared and huddled back and hiding at home, or just in the synagogue being Jewish.

But on the contrary, out in the open.

You know, across the country, you'll see giant menorahs during Hanukkah, lighting up in the city centers, as well as in Pensacola.

But it's all over and so on and so forth.

You know, you'll see billboards about different Jewish things.

And as an individual, you know, I think people are definitely very proud of who they are, and that's something which I try to instill in the people who I come in contact with, and I think that's a very, very positive thing.

And I think it's the key, you know, to be proud of who you are.

When you're sure of yourself, you'll get respect from others for it.

And most importantly, when you're proud of who you are, then you can give that to your children and give that on to the next generation.

If you're always scared of your identity and you're always running away from it, well, then, how do you want your kids to be proud of it?

- Yeah.

Rabbi David, you're newer to Pensacola, but you've served as a rabbi at other other places around the country.

What's been your impression of the community here?

- The community here, it's truly lovely.

And repeating what my colleagues say, they're really proud of not only being Jewish, but being part of this city.

Just wanted to add one more thing, if I may.

I think part of our mission as Jews is to worry and teach the Holocaust.

But not only for the sake of Jews.

Actually, this is just because we're witnesses of what can happen.

And what worries me, not only as a Jew, but as a human being, is sometimes when situations can do the perfect combination for a catastrophe, the perfect storm to boil.

Sometimes we see signs here and there with certain minorities, or it could be immigrants.

We're living in a global world.

The reality is that we're going to experience more sometimes mass migrations, whether for climate change or for political reasons, from war, as we're seeing in Ukraine.

It's going to be sometimes by the millions of people displaced.

And, as human nature, always encounter sometimes discomfort with the other, or the one that they don't really know so well.

And I think it's important in the teachings, as we've seen in the documentary, is that we're all human.

As we said (speaking Hebrew), we're created in the image of God.

And we move to this country or we move to this city, we want to do the same things as everybody else.

We want to watch the game, and send my kids to school, and pay my bills, and go to the supermarket.

And I think most human beings are in the same category.

They just want to live their life with dignity and with the freedoms that this beautiful country has given us.

- Well, we'll leave it there on that terrific sentiment.

Rabbis, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your wisdom tonight.

As well as our three rabbis, I'd like to thank our guests from the first segment of the show, Lori Ripps, Faye Merritt, and Andrea Fleekop.

A special thanks to WSRE for asking us to do a show on this important topic.

And thank you for watching.

This program will be available to view online at wsre.org.

I'm Steve Nissim, goodnight.