This public event, “75 Years After Auschwitz: Antisemitism in America,” will take place at 6:30 pm on Monday, October 4, in the Regnier Extreme Screen at Union Station. The event is part of a series of education programs presented by Union Station and MCHE to accompany the “Auschwitz, Not long ago. Not far away.” exhibition.
More than 75 years after the Holocaust, antisemitism is again on the rise in Europe. But it is also increasing here in the United States. After the recent killings in Pittsburgh, Poway, and Jersey City, and the continuous attacks against Jews in Brooklyn, the American Jewish community is worried. Nearly nine out of ten American Jews believe antisemitism is a problem in the U.S. today, and more than eight in ten believe it has increased over the last five years.
Huffnagle notes that the Jewish community’s fears were heightened even “before the unprecedented 80% increase in antisemitic incidents directly connected to the conflict between Israel and Hamas in May 2021, when Jews were attacked and Jewish institutions were vandalized from Los Angeles to New York and from Seattle to South Florida.”
And yet, nearly half of U.S. adults are not familiar with the term ‘antisemitism,’ and even once the term was explained, 53% of Americans believe antisemitism has stayed the same or decreased in the past five years—the opposite of what the data shows.
Huffnagle will discuss how to push back against antisemitism and other forms of hate and intolerance when the broader society is ignorant, why combating antisemitism is also a problem for non-Jews, and what we can do to work together to lower the levels of antisemitism in America.
The event is free, but registration is required. Masks must be worn at all times during the program, and seating is being limited so that social distancing can be observed.
Registration can be found at www.unionstation.org/event/auschwitz/holly-huffnagle. The program will not be live streamed, but a recording will be made available afterward.
Prior to working at AJC, Huffnagle served as the policy advisor to the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism at the U.S. Department of State and as a researcher in the Mandel Center of Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
She received her master’s degree from Georgetown University where she focused on 20th-century Polish history and Jewish-Muslim relations before, during, and after the Holocaust. She has lived and worked in Poland to conduct research on ethnic minority relations before World War II. Huffnagle, an evangelical Christian, believes that “the more non-Jews are active in fighting antisemitism, the lower the levels.”