Coral Springs Mayor Scott Brook opened up about his faith Wednesday as commissioners declared May Jewish American Heritage Month and honored victims of the Holocaust.
Yom HaShoah, also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day, will be commemorated on May 6 in Coral Springs. First observed in 1949, Yom HaShoah honors Holocaust victims, survivors, rescuers, and Allied liberators of Nazi concentration camps. The date also marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
The Nazis killed six million Jews and millions of others, including the mentally and physically disabled, gay people, Roma, and those the Nazis said did not conform to their racist Aryan ideals. Nations remained mostly silent as the mass murders took place.
Brook said he struggled to face the realities of the Holocaust during his youth.
“If you’ve heard me speak before, you know that I am Jewish. I was raised in Washington Heights in New York City. I went to Rabbi Moses Soloveichik [an Orthodox day school],” Brook said at Wednesday’s meeting. “When we would learn about the Holocaust, as a young person, I would generally have to step out of the room because I couldn’t deal with the pain that I heard about. Just couldn’t deal with it.”
“It wasn’t until I was in my young 20s that I was finally able to sit through Schindler’s List and learn that much more about the Holocaust and the devastation to six million Jews and many others.”
On Yom HaShoah, those marking the day pause, grieve, and consider all that was lost during the Holocaust.
“The history of the Holocaust encourages us to reflect on our moral responsibilities to prevent such incidents of hate and prejudice … honor the victims of the Holocaust, and recognize the accomplishments of the incredible survivors … there is still a lot of work to be done as proved by the surge in antisemitism worldwide.”
Rabbi Michelle Goldsmith, rabbi at Temple Beth Am in Margate, and Mathew Meyer, president of Temple Beth Orr in Coral Springs, accepted the proclamation on behalf of their congregations and the local Jewish community.
“We are very appreciative of this proclamation,” said Goldsmith, whose father is a Holocaust survivor. “There is unfortunately still a tremendous amount of Holocaust denial and a very unfortunate upsurge in antisemitism. We are blessed to live in an area where that is not quite as prevalent as in some places … but it is top of our minds.”
The city’s additional proclamation of May as Jewish American Heritage Month honors “Jewish Americans who, inspired by Jewish values and American ideals, engaged in the ongoing work of forming a more perfect union,” said Brook, citing major Jewish figures like Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, Louis Brandeis, and Haym Salomon, a principal financier of the colonists during the American Revolution.
The Jewish American experience has also been impacted by antisemitism, the proclamation states. Most recently, Jews have increasingly been the targets of vandalism, physical attacks, and antisemitic rhetoric amid a wave of anti-Israel protests.
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