Students Read Victims’ Names To Remember Holocaust

A group of students from Hillel commemorated the more than six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust by reading about 6,500 names in front of Widener Library yesterday.

Over a nine-hour period, 36 students took turns reading names in 15-minute shifts, according to Michal G. Cohen ’06, who organized the event.

The recitation of names was one of many commemorative events across the world yesterday as part of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

When Israel was formed in 1948, its government established the day to memorialize those killed in the Holocaust.

“The Holocaust is something that goes beyond the Jewish community,” Cohen said. “People need to be aware of it.”

Cohen added that reading the names is “a way to impact people who are not involved with Hillel.”

Rachel D. Galper ’05, one of the students who read names, said that “as the generation of Jews who were involved in the Holocaust passes away, it is our job to remind others what happened so that it doesn’t happen again.”

Zachary L. Bercu ’03, who also participated in the reading, agreed.

“People in our generation know people who have numbers in their arms,” he said. “But that generation is elderly, and we won’t have anyone who experienced it to talk about it. The powerful message from the generation that saw [the Holocaust] happen may unfortunately go with them.”

And students have a particular obligation to remember, Bercu said.

“We will never truly understand what it was like, but I feel I have to contribute in some small way,” he said.

Bercu said that after hearing Talia J. Rosenberg ’06 read, one woman handed him a note for her that read: “I’m not Jewish but I have relatives who are Jewish. I have great respect for the Jewish people.”

Small groups gathered to listen to the recitation throughout the day, and even passers-by “slowed down to read the sign and see what was going on,” said Daniel J. Poppers ’06, another of the readers.

The reading was part of a wider effort at Harvard to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day, known in Hebrew as Yom Hashoah.

Omer Bartov, a professor at Brown University and a scholar of Yiddish culture, spoke at Hillel yesterday afternoon after the matinee performance of The Dybbuk, a play showing at the Loeb Experimental Theater this week.

The play is about five Jews who re-enact a Yiddish play, “Dybbuk,” to cope with the suffering in a German ghetto during the Holocaust.

“Dybbuk is the “ultimate Jewish play and the most popular,” Bartov said, “very Jewish and completely universal.”