An upcoming Voices of Hope “Community in Conversation” event will present a rare opportunity for Wilton community members to hear firsthand from a Holocaust survivor about her experience as a young child hidden away by a non-Jewish family during the Holocaust.
The event — which will take place on Wednesday, June 11 at 7 p.m. at the WEPCO complex (48 New Canaan Rd.) — is co-sponsored by the Wilton Library.
The evening’s “conversation” format will also feature Wilton’s First Selectman Toni Boucher, who has a long record of advocating for Holocaust education. In 2018, then-State Senator Boucher introduced legislation mandating Holocaust education in all Connecticut high schools and worked closely with the Voices of Hope organization, whose stated mission is to promote a culture of courage against hatred through Holocaust and genocide education and remembrance. [Editor’s note: Boucher has not served in any official capacity for the organization since becoming First Selectman].
In a recent phone call with GOOD Morning Wilton, Boucher said she believes the upcoming community conversation and educational efforts are even more urgent now, in light of rising antisemitism and violence against Jews.
“I think anything we can do to bring awareness to our community, the better,” Boucher said. “I think that will go a long way.”
Wilton Library Adult Programming Associate Caryn Friedman-Quinn helped organize the program with Voices of Hope.
She explained that the June 11 event is the result of Voices of Hope’s goal to expand its education efforts in Fairfield County, after some research had led the organization to conclude that Holocaust education programs were lacking in the area.
Friedman-Quinn remarked that the “march of time” will eventually make first-person accounts of the Holocaust only available in the records of history. Nina Jacobs, the survivor who will speak at the June 11 event, is now in her 90s.
“It’s going to happen in the not too distant future that people will no longer be here to bear witness to what occurred,” Friedman-Quinn said. “That’s why they’re so very interested in passing along the stories while they’re still here, so that others, younger people, can learn about it and pass it on.”
Friedman-Quinn noted the Voices of Hope Kristallnacht commemoration event hosted by the Library last November — which also featured a Holocaust survivor as a speaker— drew an audience of nearly 400 people. (Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, was a wave of violence against Jewish people carried out in Germany and Austria in 1938.)
“You could see on the faces of the people in the audience how they were enthralled,” Friedman-Quinn said. “They were horrified. They felt enormous empathy for [the speaker].”
“When you have a person who actually lived through it, it’s really something very special to hear them speak,” Friedman-Quinn continued.
For those reasons, she expects the June 11 event will also draw large numbers and is intended for a diverse audience.
“This is an interfaith, non-denominational program,” Friedman-Quinn said, noting it is appropriate for “people of all backgrounds” including teens as well as adults.
A sentiment shared in the publicity for last year’s Kristallnacht commemoration seems equally fitting for the June 11 event:
“Whoever listens to a witness becomes a witness, so those who hear us, continue to bear witness for us. Until now they’re doing it with us. At a certain point in time, they will do it for all of us.” — Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Registration for the event is required. Additional information is posted on the Events page of the Wilton Library’s website.
This is an important event and I specifically encourage all people who are not Jewish to attend to help understand what Jews fear when we read about murders and DC and people set on fire in boulder. This is one of the last chances to her a story direct from a survivor.