TYLER, Texas (KETK) – Rabbi Neal Katz from Congregation Beth El in Tyler stopped by KETK on Tuesday to mark 80 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex.
Auschwitz was a series of concentration and extermination camps run by Nazi Germany in then-occupied Poland. According to UNESCO, 1.5 million people were systematically starved, tortured and murdered at the camp before soldiers from the Soviet Union liberated the camp on Jan. 27, 1945.
“It’s very important to our community that we have this opportunity to reflect,” said Katz. “The sadness is that lessons haven’t been learned, in fact, there are people today who are still suffering from antisemitic acts, who are grand-children of those who suffered the same attacks 80 years ago.”
Katz stressed that rising antisemitism being spread on the internet is not just a problem for the Jewish community.
“The Holocaust and antisemitism is not just a Jewish problem, so we need a wide group of people to promote this and educate in hopes that it doesn’t happen, but we are now fighting against the internet and that world of misinformation,” said Katz.
For Katz, the answer to antisemitism is for people to continue to engage with the Jewish community and to keep leaning about Jewish history, religion and culture.
“The answer for our community has always been combatting antisemitism through education. So that remains our chief option, which is to educate, engage,” Katz said. “People are generally not antisemitic if they’ve met the Jewish community, if they know Jewish people. It’s people who are in their own little silo. So our goal is just to continue engagement, continue education, being able to talk to anybody whenever they ask.”
Katz said that despite this rise in antisemitism he knows their community will see better days.
“It’s not like I can fix antisemitism, it’s actually the antisemites, they’re the ones who have to fix it. The question is how do we cope with it? And what we’re seeing is this rise in antisemitism across the country, its fueled by a lot of misinformation and politicized speech,” said Katz. “So what we’re doing is suffering through it right now, because we know that better days lie ahead.”