JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — On Wednesday, the nonprofit Jewish Families and Community Services is helping us remember the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust.
It’s part of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Helen Meatte is a retired Jacksonville teacher preparing to shed some light on her family’s past at the Frisch Family Holocaust Memorial Gallery.
One story that sticks out is her mind is when her aunt was thrown into the concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland.
“Triple-deck bunk beds with no mattresses and disease was rampant,” Meatte said.
Meattes’ aunt Louise managed to survive the horrible conditions but learned the rest of her family did not.
“She knew at that time that her father was dead. She knew in her heart that her mother was dead too. And her brother,” she said.
By the end of the Holocaust nearly two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population had been wiped out.
Many of the victims were young children. But this gallery also highlights the survivors and what they went through.
Jewish Families and Community Services was forced to close the gallery during the pandemic, but on Wednesday it’ll invite guest back inside safely by hosting two virtual tours for guest speakers to tell their stories for Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Meatte says it’s important to educate not just children but adults too.
“If we don’t know history if we don’t understand why things happen in the past then we’re going to repeat them,” she said.
A nationwide survey released last year found that 63% of people did not know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust and ……1 in 10 adults under the age of 40 had never heard the word Holocaust.
Jewish Families and Community Services tells me it’s currently providing food and support to more than 100 Holocaust survivors living in northeast Florida.
The virtual tour takes place on Wednesday at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m.
It’s free but you have to register online by Tuesday, you can register here.
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