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NEXT GENERATIONS:
Reaction from a Holocaust Survivor’s Kid
Summer 2009
Bruno Bettelheim coined the phrase “children of the dream” in describing the generation born during the optimistic air of the kibbutz movement in its early stages. I am writing this article on behalf of NEXT GENERATIONS, an organization comprised of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. We are children of the nightmare. That we are here is of course a miracle, but the strange combination of good luck and bad history creates tangled emotions and gives us feelings of rage and sorrow. We feel an urgency to educate and eradicate genocides.
We are very troubled by the shooting and killing that occurred at the Holocaust Museum in Washington,D.C. on June 10, 2009.That this was a hate crime perpetrated by a mentally sick and obsessed white supremacist with German roots and a history of violence is haunting. That he had a prison record, has an anti-Semitic, Holocaust denying website and was able to double-park outside the museum to do his dastardly deed is mind-boggling. That this incident occurred just days after President Obama visited the infamous concentration camp of Buchenwald where mass murders of Jews were carried out systematically on a daily basis astounds the psyche.
What do we do about this? What can we say? How can we accept this type of ignorant, sociopath behavior and continue on without gasping at the horrors that are still being perpetrated? How can we accept the use of scapegoats to rationalize hateful, aggressive behavior? When will the bullying stop?
NEXT GENERATIONS, in its mission statement says that one of its goals is …
To keep the voices alive...” It is our legacy to educate the public and bring to the forefront the dangers of bigotry, hatred and rampant prejudices against “the other.”
I remember when I first saw documentary footage of the camps. I had walked in as my parents sat in front of our black and white RCA television. I watched hundreds of naked bodies, more bone than flesh, being dumped in the bottom of a huge cavity. The skeletons dropped like debris into the mass grave. I observed close-ups of faces with vacant, wide-eyed stares. My father wept and my mother stared intently as if she were searching for lost relatives and friends. Let me make this very clear: There was a Holocaust.
We call ourselves 2Gs: Group shorthand for Second Generation, the survivors' children. There is a group of us. We have organizations with names like the Generation After, We have support groups, meetings, and well-attended conferences here in the U.S.A, in Europe, South America and Israel. We are all united in our goal to educate the public and have the phrase “Never Again” be understood and assured through out the world.
Greta Brewer
Vice President of Education,
NEXT GENERATIONS
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