FORT LEE, Va. (April 23, 2015) -- Members of the Fort Lee community gathered at the post theater Friday to show their support for the Holocaust National Days of Remembrance observance at a ceremony hosted by the Army Logistics University.
Jay Ipson -- co-founder of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond -- was the guest speaker for the event and began his presentation by engaging the audience with questions comparing Germany to the United States. One of the questions he asked was what type of government Germany had when Hitler rose to power. Many called out "dictatorship."
"Wrong! They had an elected government," he said. "The people elected the Nazi party."
After reminding the audience there was an elected government in the United States, Ipson continued his talk.
"After the Nazis were elected, Hitler was named chancellor -- speaker of the house, basically," he said. "He named himself the 'Fuhrer' … which meant he was the leader and dictator."
Further showing the group Germany wasn't that different from the United States, Ipson said Americans have many avenues for complaint resolutions, such as the post staff judge advocate in the military and the court system in the civilian sector.
"What did Germany have? They had courts, too," he said. "The thing was, though, the courts decided what Hitler told them to decide. They didn't decide who was innocent or guilty according to the rule of law like we do. They did what Hitler told them to do. If you went to court, you were guilty. If you were in the military and you did not want to kill a Jew, you were guilty."
Ipson was 6 years old when his extended family and he were forced into the Kovno Ghetto. It was similar to a concentration camp, he said, but only contained Jews from the local communities. Once people were brought in from surrounding countries, the distinction changed to concentration camp.
During his presentation, Ipson shared several stories of the struggle within the Kovno Ghetto, including the limited food they were allowed to eat and an instance when several family members -- including his mother and him -- were in line to be deported for execution. He and his mother were the only two out of 5,000 to survive after a Jewish police officer pulled them out of line to send him home to his father.
After escaping the ghetto with his parents in 1943, Ipson and his parents stayed hidden in the countryside for several months, including six months underground in a potato hole.
Command Sgt. Maj. Terry E. Parham Sr. thanked Ipson for sharing his story and said it's important to remember the horrors of the past to avoid them in the future.
"We cannot repeat anything like that," he said. "We have to remember so we know we cannot go there again."
Rabbi Dennis Beck-Berman, from the Brith Achim Congregation, echoed that sentiment in his benediction.
"It took all humanity from victims. Values and morality fell as surely as did lives," he said. "In the Holocaust, we truly learn the lesson that prejudice, discrimination and bigotry in their extreme forms can lead to mass murder and genocide."
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