ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Tuesday was World Holocaust Remembrance Day. About 11 million people were murdered between 1933 and 1945. The St. Petersburg Holocaust Museum held an event to keep this history alive.
“Every year, annually, it’s a special day for me as both of my parents were survivors of the Holocaust,” said Harry Heuman, who was born in a displaced persons camp in Kempten, Germany in 1946. For Heuman, Holocaust Remembrance Day is a time to reflect and honor those who were murdered.
He’s also thankful that most of his immediate family made it out alive. “It was my mother, my father, one grandparent and my aunt and uncle. I’m very fortunate that I had those five people because fellow second generation [Jews] may have one parent or one person from their family that didn’t survive,” said Heuman.
At the St. Petersburg Holocaust Museum, volunteers could be heard reading some of the names of the millions of people who were slaughtered during the holocaust. It was a way of paying homage to those people and also keeping this history alive for as long as possible to prevent it from ever happening again.
“Every year when I read the names of those people who did perish, it puts a pit in my stomach knowing that one day I might read the names of relatives who perished that were from my family,” said Heuman.
For Sarasota Mayor Kyle Battie, Holocaust Remembrance is a time to reflect on humanity and the worst humans are capable of doing. “I remember reading the Diary of Ann Frank with my class in 7th grade in Brookside Middle School in Sarasota, Florida, and it always had a great impact on me,” said Battie.
Something that stood out to me at the museum was the fact that there was security. The president of the museum said it’s an unfortunate reality they have to deal with. “In a perfect world, there would be no need to have this level of security in order to enter any museum. Unfortunately, with the rise in antisemitic incidents and the need to keep our visitors not only feeling safe but actually safe,” explained Carl Goodman, president of the St. Petersburg Holocaust Museum.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, there was a 36% increase in antisemitic harassment from 2021 to 2022, which is the biggest increase since the group started keeping track in 1979. 269 of last year’s incidents were reported in Florida, the 4th highest in the country.
As president of the museum, Goodman just hopes that education can help curb this alarming trend. “It fills me with a deep sense of sadness to even have to have events like this that every day, in a sense, should be a day that people think about the possibilities of genocide,” said Goodman.
