As people gathered Thursday in Poland to remember the liberation of Auschwitz, the Jewish community in Memphis also felt the impact of the Holocaust.
Benyamin Yaffe, a sophomore at The U of M, had many people in his family who were in the camps, including his grandparents.
They were both prisoners in Auschwitz and faced the horror of the camps.
They would sometimes have to carry large rocks back and forth 30 or 40 times and were subjected to other forms of abuse.
"My grandfather was put in front of the firing squad four times, but because he was such a hard worker he was allowed to live," Yaffe said.
Auschwitz was such a large part of the Holocaust during World War II that by the time it was liberated more than one million Jews had died there. Survivors, their families and world leaders were among the people at the site of the concentration camp on the 60th anniversary of its liberation. While there were many concentrations camps created during the war, Auschwitz is the most well known.
"The sheer size of it made it a symbol of the Holocaust," said David Patterson, professor of Judaic studies at The U of M. "As many as 170,000 people were there at any given time."
Many of them were shot, put in gas chambers, starved and placed into crematories. The ones who did survive were forced to do harsh manual labor.
The importance of knowing about Auschwitz, and the other camps, goes beyond just the Jewish community, Patterson said.
"It is important for any human to know what took place because it was an attempt to take away the sanctity of humans," Patterson said.For Yaffe's grandparents, after surviving the Holocaust they still experience some effects from it.
Yaffe's mother has told him of his grandfather often waking up in the middle of the night from nightmares about the camps.
He also remembers his grandparents being extra cautious, even when they had moved to Nashville years later.
"For a number of years they would always check and double check to see if all the doors and windows were locked," he said. "They would do this because, back then, the Nazis had barged into their house and taken them."
The closeness of the Holocaust has had a large effect on Yaffe."I find myself thinking about it a lot," he said. "It's important to my bloodline and faith."
Forty members of his family were in concentration camps. Those who survived either escaped or were liberated, and met up with his great uncle, Jack Schlanger, and then went to France. They then immigrated to America at Ellis Island in New York.
Rabbi Yair Spitz, of Baron Hirsch Congregation in Memphis, said that the Holocaust taught him about human's accountability in making decisions.
"It has revealed to me the responsibility we have as human beings," he said. "God gives us the power to choose and, just as we can choose the very good, we can choose the very bad."
While the Holocaust was a dark period for the Jewish community and the world, many Jews have used it to bring themselves closer to their convictions.
"It gave a renewed sense of identity and a determination to keep the traditions," Patterson said. "For many Jews, it's resulted in a deeper commitment to their faith."
Yaffe echoed the feeling of gaining a stronger faith as an affect of the Holocaust.
"It gives us a sense of pride," he said. "Even in the camps our faith couldn't be stopped."
