Over 30 students and faculty members gathered outside the Rock at 4 p.m. Monday to remember the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust. They wore black with “NEVER FORGET” stickers emblazoned across their chests as they marched around campus in silence and then held a service in honor of Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Alpha Epsilon Pi’s Tau Delta chapter co-sponsored the third annual We Walk to Remember, along with Tannenbaum Chabad House, Fiedler Hillel and B’nai B’rith. The event is part of a week-long Hillel event called “Why do you Jew what you do?” that continues until Saturday.
“The Holocaust was a devastating tragedy,” said Adam Matsil, McCormick junior and AEPi president. “It didn’t only harm and affect Jews.”
Members marched in a single-file line from the Rock up to the Garrett parking lot and then back south past Norris. Rabbis Josh Feigelson of Hillel and Dov Hillel Klein of Tannenbaum Chabad House each spoke about the importance of remembering Holocaust victims and survivors before AEPi brothers lit six memorial candles.
“We walked around campus to remember those who died,” Klein said. “There is nothing more important than freedom and perhaps that’s what this walk is about.”
He put the significance of the Holocaust in context using Osama bin Laden’sdeath Sunday. Klein expressed his happiness while emphasizing the relative magnitude of the Holocaust. He pointed out that bin Laden was responsible for thousands deaths as opposed to Adolf Hitler’s millions.
Weinberg freshman Richard Goldring said that with bin Laden’s death, more people are likely to remember victims of tragedies in general today.
“Osama bin Laden’s death couldn’t have happened at a better time to get Americans to realize that every tragedy needs to be remembered,” he said.