A new program in the suburbs is trying to reduce anti-Jewish hate as antisemitic incidents are up nearly 400% in the U.S. just since last year, according to the ADL.
“Antisemitism in the United States is on the rise and I’m very, really alarmed,” Lin Novitsky told NBC Chicago.
As a child, Novitsky survived the Holocaust as a child, but her grandmother was one of the millions of Jews murdered by the Nazis.
“I don’t want my past to become your future,” Novitsky said, “Never again.”
Novitsky fled the Soviet Union because of antisemitism and came to the U.S.
“It’s a big concern. And it’s irony. We came from Soviet Union and after 44 years we got, not to that extent like in Russia, but pretty much scary situation, this antisemitism,” Novitsky said.
She is one of the Holocaust survivors leading a new anti-hate program at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie.
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“Holocaust education is one of the key critical tools to building empathy and building a better world that is free of antisemitism and other forms of hate,” Bernard Cherkasov, Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center CEO said. “One of the things we hear from our survivors is that even thought this is hard and they are heartbroken, they cannot give up on fighting for a better day and nor can we.”
Cherkasov fled antisemitism in Azerbaijan and came to the U.S. as a teenager.
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“We encountered people who showed us humanity, who treated us with dignity and who were rooting for us to be able to settle and have a better life,” Cherkasov said. “Humanity and dignity are absolutely the answers and fact one of the takeaways that we want the visitors to this museum to feel is that we're wanting them to figure out a way to take a stand for humanity and their own lives.”
He hopes the museum’s new program reminds people to show humanity to each other and to also speak up against hate and injustice.
“It gives me hope that despite what we’re seeing right now in today’s world that we can fight for a better future just like our Holocaust survivors are reminding us to do every single day,” Cherkasov said.
