Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity hosts a Holocaust Remembrance Walk

Nearly 100 students gathered at the flag pole on the University Center front lawn Wednesday to commemorate the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust.

Alpha Epsilon Pi, Lehigh’s jewish fraternity, hosted on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Though the first of its kind at Lehigh, Holocaust Remembrance Walks take place all over the country by AEPi chapters at 130 different campuses.

“It’s really meaningful to be a part of,” said Jonathan Cohen,’15, the president of AEPi. Cohen hoped the university would respond well to the walk and bring unity across the campus. His sentiment was shared by other participants in the walk. 

“I want us all to come together and remember our history,” Colby Berman,’17, said.

The walk began with a speech led by AEPi member Allon Vitenson, ’18, who urged the message of “never forget.” Vitenson encouraged the audience to never forget the lives lost and never forget the history of the Jewish people. Most importantly, he said, stand together against evil in the world. Vitenson read the names of 13 people who lost their lives during the Holocaust.

These 13 names were Lehigh’s contribution to the recitation of the names of each         of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust. Each year on Yom Hashoah, all                                                                                    six million names are recited, according to Vitenson.

Students began to silently walk all across campus, through the University Center toward Drown and Lamberton Halls, down through Centennial II Complex and across E. Packer Avenue. Students were dressed in all black with stickers across their shirts that read “Never Forget.” The walk concluded back at the flag pole where a holocaust survivor speaker was announced.

 Ann Jaffe, the grandmother of a Lehigh student, spoke about her experience as a   Holocaust survivor. Jaffe was liberated from the Nazis in 1944. She grew up in a small  village in Poland amongst both Christian and Jewish families that lived in harmony.  When Nazis raided her village in 1941, her family and all the Jews in her village were  forced to give away all of their belongings. Jaffe’s father was subjected to hard labor.

With no other way to escape, Jaffe’s family endured oppression and ostracism from neighbors and close friends because of their faith. Jaffe said it shocked her how the Christian families she felt she trusted had turned against her family.

“They had become executioners instead of our neighbors,” Jaffe said about the         militiamen who patrolled the villages. For months, she said, families were killed under   Nazi occupation and only survived with the acts of kindness from Christian families who wanted to help.

 “There were some extraordinary individuals who were heroes of that era,” she said of those who provided aide.

 Jaffe recalled close encounters with death but said her family’s skills and perseverance made them useful to the Nazis and allowed them to live longer. But when Jaffe’s family was transported to a new ghetto, they knew they had to escape.                                         She described how her family hid in a forest for 10 months until they were liberated, what she calls a life-changing 10 months. 

“The desire for life is strong,” Jaffe said, adding that this desire is what kept them going, as well as the compassion and kindness others showed them.

“Kindness is something that needs to be taught,” Jaffe said. She noted that her father taught her to have kindness despite all of the horrors she experienced.

At the end of the day, she said, her experiences made her a stronger person.