Remembering the Holocaust: flags for lost lives

By Chris O'Connell

Hillel, the Jewish student union, set up a Holocaust memorial this week in the Santa Clara Mall. The memorial consists of hundreds of flags, each representing 8,000 people killed in Nazi concentration camps.

Different colored flags denote the several groups victim to the atrocity, including Jews, Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, and Catholic clergy. The site ran from Monday until Wednesday.

When the brief memorial was set last year, there were reports of anti-Semitic sentiment. Side walk chalking assailed the monument for being pro-Israel, when the memorial supported no nationality, but merely served as a reminder of the massacre that occurred only fifty years ago to several groups of people of different ethnicity, nationality, and religion. A woman was also harassed trying to read the memorial plaque last year.

No cases of harassment have arisen this spring. Yana Krasnovskaya, the president of Hillel at Santa Clara, and Aaron Rubin, Campus Service Fellow of Hillel of Silicon Valley, are working to bring Jewish culture awareness to the eclectic mix at Santa Clara. Rubin said that he is pleased to work with Campus Ministry, the Muslim Student Association (MSA) and the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship.

This is an eventful week for Hillel. This Thursday May 15, they are sponsoring author Bryan Mark Rigg's discussion on his book, "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers." The event will be held in Conference Room 21 in the Benson Center at 6 p.m.

On Monday at 7 p.m. in the Recital Hall, Hillel continue their work with MSA and the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship collaborating on "Just Warfare," an interfaith dialogue between the Abrahamic traditions.

For more information about the Jewish Student Union, meetings are every other Tuesday at 5:50 p.m. in The Bronco.