AVENTURA, FLA. (WSVN) - - Holocaust survivors Tuesday night gathered with other members of the community to pray for the safe return of those held hostage by the terrorist group Hamas.
The slogan “never again” became a saying for the Jewish people after the Holocaust. Many of those survivors have spent much of their lives spreading that message and are reminding people of the horrors they faced.
Now, their biggest fears, is that those horrors are once again returning.
With great pain, comes great strength.
“I was in three concentration camps,” Saul Dreier said.
“My father was killed right away,” Diane Horowitz said.
“It’s never again, it’s here, it’s ever again, and I hope that never again will mean something to everybody, and please, stop all this evil,” Tzippy Holland said.
These holocaust survivors have looked evil in the face once before and fear that as the war rages on in Israel, that evil is peaking its head out all around the world again.
“I was 13 years old when I was taken away from my family,” said a survivor.
Now, the pain of the Holocaust is understood more than ever with the pain that kidnapped children should be home with their families.
Their stories can’t be heard yet, but one can only understand a sliver of what they’re experiencing by going through the history.
“It’s painful for all of us,” said Moran Alfansi Caplan with Holocaust Heroes Worldwide.
Caplan is a third generation Holocaust survivor, which is why she organized the event through Holocaust Heroes Worldwide.
“Where are we going as a Jewish nation, as a world, as a humanity” she said.
To put it front and center, that history should not be repeating itself.
“I am on that emotional roller coaster,” said Saul Blau, a survivor.
That future is portrayed in a piece of art.
“As we speak, there are kids in the tunnels of Gaza, sleeping there and they don’t have any way to defend themselves,” said Alon Var, an artist.
Var detailed the Hamas attack through art. The attack, that he fears, could spread across the world if it’s not put to a stop.
But one thing he knows for sure is that the Jewish culture will always continue to do what it does best.
“We are here to show the light, and as the Jewish nation, we know that no matter what happened, we’re going to keep shining our light to the word,” he said.
Var’s art will also be shown in Boca Raton at a BBQ on Wednesday.
Anyone is welcome to join and put a message inside of his art to send words of hope to the people of Israel.
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