For the past 15 years, Steven Green has worked with S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services’ Holocaust Center, sharing his late grandfather’s story of survival in Nazi labor camps and attempting to answer a difficult question: “What does the Holocaust have to do with us now?”
That question hung in the air as Green addressed around 150 community members, Jewish leaders, elected officials and foreign diplomats who gathered Sunday night at the Menorah Center SF ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“Antisemitism is not theoretical. It’s not just something people debate in classrooms or post about online. It’s not abstract,” Green said. “It’s real, it’s personal, and it has been passed down from generation to generation.”
In 2005, the United Nations designated Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day to commemorate the date that the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp was liberated in 1945.
At Sunday’s commemoration in San Francisco, speakers reflected on the genocidal campaign waged by the Nazis during World War II to wipe out Europe’s Jews.
Front of mind for many speakers, too, was a question tied to the Jewish experience today: How should the Jewish community respond when Israel itself is accused of perpetrating a genocide?
Earlier this month, state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-S.F.) sent shockwaves through the Bay Area Jewish community when he declared that he believes the Israeli military committed a genocide in Gaza during its war following the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7, 2023. Wiener, who is Jewish and has been co-chair of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus for years, had never previously used that word, which has become a common accusation lodged by opponents of Israel.
It’s a claim that many scholars, military experts and the Israeli government reject, pointing to efforts to mitigate civilian harm in Gaza, as well as to the country’s stated war aims, which were to destroy Hamas and return hostages captured by the terrorist group.
“The world around you is going haywire,” Rabbi Shimon Margolin, executive director of the Russian-speaking Jewish Community of SF Bay Area, told the audience Sunday. “The people who suffered genocide are accused of genocide. People are subject to litmus tests as part of their campaigns.”
None of the speakers mentioned Wiener by name but strongly hinted at his remarks and expressed their dismay, including arguing that this statement has made the local Jewish community more of a target.
“It’s deeply painful and disappointing to see Jewish political figures here in California appallingly regurgitate the latest version of a blood libel based not on fact or law, but on biased perception and speculation,” said Marco Sermoneta, Israel’s consul general for the Pacific Northwest. “Those who fought antisemitism for so long are now promoting a scandalous, false charge that foments the very phenomenon that has brought, as they are aware, deadly violence against their own community.”
The ceremony’s keynote speaker, Assemblymember Catherine Stefani (D-S.F.), spoke about the political climate surrounding antisemitism and appeared to reference the Israel-Hamas war.
“‘Never again’ cannot simply be something we just say. It must be something we do,” she said. “When political pressure mounts and when purity tests are imposed, when cease-fire resolutions become vehicles for antisemitism, it is more important than ever to have a backbone.”
The youngest speaker at Sunday’s event, high school student Lev Miller Ruderman, knows firsthand what it’s like to be the target of antisemitism and Nazi imagery. Last spring during his freshman year at San Lorenzo Valley High School, another student drew a Nazi flag on a piece of paper and taped it to Ruderman’s back without his knowing. Ruderman shared his story at a September hearing in the state Legislature for AB 715, the new K-12 antisemitism law, the Associated Press reported.
“It’s not just one group or nation that tries to annihilate the Jewish people, but in every generation, groups or nations rise up to annihilate us. But HaShem saves us from their hands,” he told the audience. “Our history shows that when we stay true to ourselves and stand together as a community, we not only survive, but we thrive.”
Ruderman’s experience was a concrete example of problems that Stefani mentioned earlier in the evening.
“Attacks on Jewish students and Jewish communities are not isolated incidents. They are warning signs,” Stefani said. “History has taught us at a terrible cost what happens when warning signs are ignored.”
Representatives from several foreign consulates attended Sunday’s event, including from Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Georgia, Kazakhstan, India, Mexico and Peru.
“Remembering the Holocaust is a fundamental moral obligation and responsibility,” said Deputy Consul General to Germany Franciska Obermeyer. “This is exactly why gatherings like this matter, because remembrance becomes most powerful when it is lived together across generations, across communities and across national backgrounds.”
The communitywide event was presented by the Consulate General of Israel and the Russian-speaking Jewish Community of SF Bay Area in partnership with nine other major Jewish organizations, including the Jewish Federation Bay Area and the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area — both of which shared remarks.
JCRC Chief Executive Officer Tye Gregory reflected on how the Holocaust led his surviving family members, and those of many other families, to leave Russia and Germany and find a new home in the United States.
“When I think of Holocaust remembrance, I think of them, and I think of all the trauma that they went through as immigrants. But this was the community where they found a home, and where my story is possible,” Gregory said, connecting his personal story to his role as a Jewish advocacy leader. “We have to fight to make sure that our community has a seat at the tables where decisions are made.”
At the end of the evening, speakers lit memorial candles, and Margolin led the gathering in prayer, reciting a version of El Ma’aleh Rachamim, a prayer for the dead, dedicated to victims of the Holocaust, and the Mourner’s Kaddish.