MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WBTW) – The Jewish Congregations of Myrtle Beach held a Holocaust and Israel Memorial Day commemoration.
The Jewish Synagogue of Myrtle Beach and other supporters of Israel gathered Monday at the Chabad Community Center on North Oak Street.
Myrtle Beach resident Hugo Schiller says he was a child survivor of the Holocaust.
Schiller says he was just 9 years old when he spent six months in a concentration camp.
“We were the first Jews deported out of Germany when France capitulated. They were forced to take several thousand Jewish German citizens and build a concentration camp…”
Schiller says he remembers being chosen along with 47 other children by the Quakers to be released into a better environment and the rest of his family didn’t make it.
He says he never thought he would have to go through it again, “the escape from anti-Semitism, what little I remember from when I was little, that’s how it started in Germany, I don’t think we’ve learned as many lessons as we should have already.”
Rabbi Avi Perets of Temple Emanu-El says the ceremony is special because it is Israel’s Memorial Day.
He says they are celebrating the lives of more than 1,600 Jews who have been killed since October 7th.th.
“We say never again, never again to racism, never again to anti-Semitism, and unfortunately, October 7th came, and Hamas showed us how important it is to remember, because it happens again.”
Rabbi Perets says many people don’t understand because they are misinformed.
“They don’t recognize Israel, they don’t recognize the Israelites and they are trying to live in the homeland, in the promised land, and that will never happen,” says Perets.
1.3 million butterflies were collected 26 years ago across the country in one project.
Each symbolizing the life of a child that was lost. On Monday, those butterflies were hung throughout the Chabad Community Center.
Mayor Brenda Bethune, Judge Alan Clemmons and former Mayor Bob Hirsch were other guest speakers at this remembrance.
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