This month, our community gathered during Friday Speaker to observe Holocaust Remembrance Day. Led by students from GFA’s Jewish Culture Club and Affinity Group, the program invited us to consider what it means to remember, to witness, and to carry responsibility forward.
The reflection began with the image of light. In Jewish tradition, lighting a memorial candle honors a life lost and restores light to a world diminished by absence. In the context of the Holocaust—the Shoah—this act carries particular weight. It reminds us that remembrance is not passive. It is something we do, intentionally and together.
Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and it calls us to confront not only the atrocities of World War II, but the long history of antisemitism that made them possible. Students spoke to this continuum with clarity and courage, emphasizing that understanding the past is essential to shaping a more just future. As one student shared, quoting Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: “The Holocaust did not define what it is to be a Jew. The Holocaust defined what it is to be human.”
Throughout the morning, the focus remained on people—on individual lives, choices, and acts of care that endured even in the darkest circumstances. Students recounted stories of survival passed down through families and through history: stories shaped by loss, resilience, and the quiet bravery of those who helped others live. These narratives reminded us that the Holocaust is not an abstract event, but a collection of human experiences whose impact continues to echo across generations.
Faculty reflections returned to the idea of l’dor v’dor—from generation to generation. Remembrance, they reminded us, is sustained not only through formal observance, but through teaching, storytelling, and shared responsibility. It lives in the questions students ask, the values they articulate, and the empathy they practice every day.
As the program drew to a close, six speakers stood holding candles—representing the six million Jewish lives lost, and the millions of others persecuted. The moment was quiet, solemn, and resolute. In that stillness, we were reminded that remembering is itself an act of courage.