By Rachel Lee Garofolo, Freelance Contributor with the Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Committee
For more than four decades, community member Steve Gonzer has been deeply involved with the Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Committee at the Jewish Federation of Delaware, driven by a profound commitment to remembrance, learning, and ensuring that the Holocaust’s teachings will never fade from memory. After finding out that 75–100 of his relatives were murdered in the Holocaust, Gonzer felt “an unexplainable emptiness in [his] chest” because these senseless deaths and horrors were never discussed by his family. “I felt an intense need to keep the voices of those who perished, from ever becoming silent, and not just for Jewish victims, but for all victims of genocide, especially those who never had a voice because the only silence was from the perpetrators.”
The currents shaping America today should ring warning bells for all of us. Normalizing hatred, targeting ‘outsiders,’ and eroding democratic norms echo the initial steps taken by the Nazis. While history never repeats itself exactly, the rocky path America is on—where minorities are dehumanized, fear is politicized, and falsehoods are widely spread—mirrors the shadowed tides that have pulled societies into darkness. In her diary, Anne Frank documented that Jews were required to wear yellow stars, were prohibited from using various forms of transportation and entertainment, had their property seized, and were banned from certain professions, alongside many other oppressive measures. These incremental restrictions and gradual loss of freedom still occurred as many people remained silent, whether out of fear, indifference, or prejudice. “We’re Jews in chains,” she wrote.
We can only hope that future generations will act with greater wisdom when intolerance, bigotry, and discrimination harm others—not just ourselves. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.” (Leviticus 19:18) The Torah commands love for the stranger, reminding Israel they were once strangers in Egypt. Gonzer believes history is cyclical and not linear, and genocide is not perpetrated overnight but over time. “If future generations are taught to recognize the warning signs of genocide in advance, we may be able to proact rather than react to evil human behavior,” he explains.
“Today’s generation will become tomorrow’s world leaders, and tomorrow’s leaders will become the mentors and role models for the following generation, and the process keeps marching on. I believe the more we talk about the Holocaust and genocide, the more we learn about it, the less likely we are to repeat it.” Gonzer shares. To teach the next generation that even when tyranny looms, standing firm becomes a lesson in courage they will carry forward. Hate is heavy and we all fall together.
Gonzer states that he “believe[s] we need to shed more light on the spirit of human resilience as a means of diffusing the focus on violence, complacency, indifference, and hatred when teaching about the Holocaust and other genocides. There are thousands of documented cases of Righteous Gentiles who risked their lives and lives of their loved ones to save others from certain death, not just during the Holocaust, but during every act of genocide.”
In holding the tragic past close to our hearts, we must also gently cradle hope for the generations to come, as Anne Frank did while writing her private thoughts in her diary, a teenager trying to understand the world that closed in on her. “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” In the end, Anne Frank maintained faith in human resilience, hope, and kindness, despite being—along with millions of others—ultimately failed by the world.
Gonzer’s dedicated engagement in Holocaust education reminds us that remembrance, conscience, and human understanding must be woven through the fabric of each generation of hearts, nurtured steadily over a lifetime. Each presentation, memorial, and classroom discussion carries the torch of memory forward. By passing these lessons from one generation to the next, we honor the principle of L’dor V’dor: the responsibility of one generation to teach, protect, and guide the next.
To learn more about the Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Committee, visit www.shalomdelaware.org/what-we-do
