Harvard Mourns Victims of Holocaust

Liza Kaufman. Hugo Kaufman. Richard Kaufman. Emma Katz. Frieda Katz.

These were some of the approximately 14,400 Holocaust victims' names read over a loudspeaker from the steps of Widener yesterday to commemorate Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

"There is a tendency to forget or want to forget, particularly since genocide still happens," said George S. Schneiderman '95, who coordinated the event with Elizabeth B. Stein '95. "Jews are commanded to remember. We'll only make it through a small fraction of the six million names, but at least, they'll turn into names and not numbers."

Assuming a name was read every two seconds, the eight hours of names represented less than one-quarter of one percent of the six million people who perished under the Nazi regime.

Over 90 people of varying religions, including Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III and Cambridge Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves '72, took turns reading names continuously in five-minute slots between nine a.m. and five p.m. yesterday, according to Stein.

In addition, six traditional yahrtzeit candles burned all day on Widener's steps in honor of the six million killed.

The National Hillel Organization distributed the lists of victims to campuses around the country.

Passing students said they couldn't help but notice the names of the victims being read.

"When you walk to class, they're reading. When you walk back, they're still reading. When you go to breakfast, they're reading. When you go to dinner, they're reading," Jesse G. Lichtenstein '98 said. "[It shows] how staggering death is."

Bettina S. Shultz, a proctor in Weld and one of this year's readers, said she thinks the impact on students is "subliminal."

"[Before this year] I was one of those people just walking, hearing the names," she said. "I don't think people really stop and go `Wow'. It's one of those things that creeps up on you."

In another commemorative activity, approximately 75 people attended a Yom HaShoah memorial service at Hillel Wednesday evening.

Observers held candles during the two-hour service as students read victims' names quietly, while Holocaust book excerpts and poems were interspersed with readings from the Book of Job and traditional prayers.

Benjamin Jacobs, a Holocaust survivor, and author of the recently published book The Dentist of Auschwitz, was the speaker.

Jacobs, who was born in Poland, spoke of his ordeal in Nazi camps.

"I realized I was born at the wrong time, in the wrong place, into the wrong religion," he said.

He gave a first-hand account of life in a concentration camp, his family's death, being a dentist in Auschwitz, were he had to extract gold teeth from corpses. "We were no longer people in Auschwitz. We became numbers. [I was] number 141129," he said, pointing to his left forearm where the number was tattooed.

Jacob criticized the world's refusal to act to prevent the Nazis atrocities, saying the silence of the allies condoned the killing of millions of jews.

"This is why Hitler felt he was doing the world a favor," he said.