In the current anti-Israel, anti-Semitic atmosphere on American campuses, this professor was pleasantly surprised by a successful turnout at what turned out to be an inspiring Holocaust Memorial Day event at his community college.
As a history professor and a Jew, I am always pained by the amount of anti-Semitism that comes out of our universities. Today the BDS (anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement is a masquerade for Jew hatred.
I was born in Israel and moved to the U.S. as a child. History has always been a passion of mine and I have been a history professor at Cypress College for 16 years. When, a few weeks ago, two of my colleagues approached me and said, “David, we would like to hold a Holocaust Memorial Day event on the campus, can use your help?” I did not hesitate.
At the time, when we started to plan our event, which included an address by a Holocaust survivor, I did not have high hopes. Then, on the evening of May 4, I witnessed a miracle. Cypress, California, is not a heavily Jewish area. I don’t even think we have a synagogue in Cypress. When we first planned the event, at best we thought we would get 150 people to show up; in fact, we were going to hold it in a small lobby. That evening, over a thousand souls descended on our community college, and hundreds more have already taken to the internet to watch our event.
We were beyond lucky that the president of our campus decided to invest in this event and allowed us to hold it outdoors by our pond instead of in a little lobby. Not only did our students come, but many brought their families. We managed to have five Holocaust survivors come to our event, as well as a rabbi and a German consulate member. The Cypress city council came. A student of mine from 15 years ago heard about our Yom HaShoah event and brought her two daughters.
The evening was full of so much positive emotion. When Dr. Eisenbach, one of the survivors, spoke, you could hear a pin drop. I was in awe from the entire experience.
The next day I received an email from another Jewish professor at Cypress. He told me how he often feels like the Jews are the smallest minority on our campus, and yet he sat with the crowd that was almost all non-Jews, while everyone was teary eyed through the entire event. Cypress is a tight-knit community, middle class, and mainly Christian. Yet on May 4, they were all Jews.
Nearly a week later I still get emotional thinking about how this event, which did not exist a month ago, has been described by faculty members who have been on the campus for over 30 years as the proudest moment of our entire college’s history.
So yes, we still have to keep up the fight against anti-Semitism and anti-Israel rhetoric on our college campuses, but for at least one evening our community came together in love and friendship and reminded our next generation, in beautiful testimonials, of the horrors that befell our people. We will never forget. Never again.