‘We cannot tolerate hate’: Holocaust survivors honored at gathering
Fred Mulbauer was carried out of a Nazi concentration camp with typhoid fever more than seven decades ago, he “had a schoolboy’s dream” that he’d never see that kind of hate again.
“I thought we survived this, we will now be treated like princes,” said the 90year-old, who now lives in Bal Harbour and was 14 when he was liberated in 1945. “I was dreaming.”
Mulbauer, who teaches children about the atrocities of the Holocaust, was one of more than 1,100 people who gathered Monday night for the Greater Miami Jewish Federation’s Main Event. Holocaust survivors, MiamiDade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, Archbishop of Miami Thomas Wenski and Ruben Roberts, chairman of the NAACP’s Miami-Dade branch, were among those who filled the ballroom of the Hilton Downtown.
This year’s event — one of the largest fundraisers for the federation — coincided with International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, World War II’s largest concentration camp in Nazioccupied Poland. Historians estimate that more than 1.1 million people died at
Auschwitz, including nearly 1 million Jews.
The convergence of the federation’s Main Event with the Auschwitz anniversary was not an accident. Jacob Solomon, president and CEO of the federation, said the board thought it was an important message to share that 75 years after the Holocaust, Jews are still facing anti-Semitism.
“The lessons of the Holocaust are so important that we continue to take every advantage we can to reteach the lessons we’re supposed to have learned as a result of the Nazi genocide,” Solomon said. “Unfortunately, with the precipitous rise in anti-Semitic incidents over the past few years ... there is even more of an urgency.”
Steve Brodie, who cochaired the event with his wife Shelly, said organizers wanted to send a loud message that the community stands together in solidarity.
“We as the South Florida community need to make sure that no ethnicity, no religious group or no minority feels isolated,” he said. “We cannot tolerate hate.”
On the same day, dozens of Holocaust survivors along with Poland’s President Andrzej Duda and Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin gathered at the Auschwitz concentration camp in southern Poland to mark the anniversary. On Jan. 27, 1945, the Soviet Army liberWhen ated the camp.
The federation program began with survivors and young adults standing shoulder to shoulder on the stage as the national anthems of the United States and Israel were sung.
Leaders addressed increasing anti-Semitic attacks and what the federation is doing to combat it. Recently, the federation wrote an open letter about Anti-Semitism urging the community to step up against hate. Video clips warned of anti-Semitism around the world.
For 18-year-old Sofia Wagner, a Florida International University freshman and member of the Hillel chapter, being in the presence of Holocaust survivors is seeing “living history.”
“To see how they went through what they went through and survived gives you hope and puts things in perspective,” she said.
The federation gave Deborah Lipstadt, an Emory University professor who has written books about the Holocaust and Jewish history, the 2020 Friend of Israel Award. In 2019, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley received the award.
Lipstadt wrote the book, “History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier,” after a Holocaust denier, David Irving, filed a libel suit against her and her publisher, Penguin Books. She and Penguin won the case against Irving. The book was made into a film, “Denial.”
“As a scholar, author and lecturer, she has boldly championed the value of historical truth and bravely faced down the forces of Holocaust denial and antiSemitism,” Solomon said as he introduced Lipstadt, who received a standing ovation. “Her depth and content are only matched by her passion for truth, her highly effective advocacy and her tireless dedication to the welfare of the Jewish people.”
For Mulbauer, the pain of what he endured during World War II is still raw. He struggles with telling his story without crying. He was only 13 when the Nazis came to his home in Czechoslovakia in 1943.
The first camp he was sent to — after a four-night ride in a cattle car with 100 people — was Auschwitz. He was with his mother, father and sister. When they arrived, his mother offered to help a woman who had three small children. She was holding a baby and was automatically sent to the gas chambers.
“My mother was a young woman,” he said, as he still struggles with the loss. “She didn’t even have a chance. She had a big heart and she was helping that woman out.”
Mulbauer was eventually transported to Buchenwald, a large concentration camp in Germany. When he was liberated, he was sent to a Swedish hospital to recover from his typhoid fever. He was there for two years.
He said he can’t understand how the world allowed the Holocaust to happen and can’t fathom why there is still so much hate. He said hearing about anti-Semitic attacks, including the shootings at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh in October 2018, is “horrifying.”
“The world still hasn’t learned,” he said.
Judah Samet, 83, who survived the Holocaust as a young child, saw firsthand that anti-Semitism is still alive.
Samet had been a congregant of Tree of Life in Pittsburgh for more than 50 years when Robert Bowers opened fire during the Saturday morning service. Samet was running four minutes late that day. When he got there, someone told him the synagogue was being shot up.
“If I was there, I wouldn’t be here today,” said Samet, who was honored at the event with his daughter and grandson.