JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Jacksonville Holocaust Memorial commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day by highlighting stories of survivors living in Northeast Florida.
The day marks 81 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
The LJD Jewish Family and Community Services hosted a panel where several Holocaust survivors and their families discussed the atrocities that occurred many years ago.
Holocaust survivors Morris Bendit and Manfred Katz, along with Cecilia Cristol, daughter of a Holocaust survivor, spoke on the panel.
Bendit shared his story with News4JAX about when he was less than a year old, and his family was taken to a ghetto in Ukraine during the Holocaust.
“From there, we were taken, after a couple of weeks, we were taken to a province called Transnistria, which was also in the Ukraine, 16,000 square miles, and it was designated to annihilate Jews,” he explained.
Cristol’s mother, escaped Romania and immigrated to New Zealand with the help of two Baptist ministers.
She shared that for many years her mother didn’t view herself as a survivor because she didn’t get sent to a concentration camp.
“In order to leave Europe, they had to sell everything. She remembers her parents constantly having to buy pounds to get out of Europe. And the price of the pound kept going up,” said Cristol. “So she would come home from school and there would be rugs missing, clothes missing, jewelry was sold, everything was sold. She also remembers having to go to the insane asylum outside of town, her and her mother, to prove that they were sane.”
Bendit described the harsh conditions, saying his family had to walk between towns in the cold and starvation. Sadly, two-thirds of his family did not survive.
He emphasized the importance of telling his story to as many people as possible.
“We’re not going to be here forever to talk about it,” Bendit said. “I realized the older generations that survived the Holocaust were not going to be here forever.”
Katz recognizes the importance of being able to share his story so many years after the Holocaust.
“There was a time, especially after the last camp, I was thoroughly convinced that I was not going to survive because people were dying around me,” he said. “Somehow in my head, I said to myself, not today, maybe tomorrow, but not today. And of course when tomorrow came, I repeated, not the day, that’s how I survived. I have no other properties or talents that made me survive.”
Bendit feels a sense of importance in continuing to share his story, especially with the ongoing issue of anti-Semitism.
“Every time I do speak, I get a knot in my stomach...It brings back the past by talking... So I feel obligated to myself to keep talking,” he said.
There are resources to learn about the Holocaust locally. You can visit the Jacksonville Holocaust Memorial’s website for more information.