Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025 | 2 a.m.
Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley still remembers the biting cold she experienced 20 years ago setting foot in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp to mark the 60th year since the liberation of thousands of prisoners in 1945.
Berkley is the granddaughter of immigrants who fled to the United States while escaping persecution during the Holocaust. On Monday during a ceremony at UNLV marking 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, she recalled her parents’ story alongside her 2005 congressional trip to the camp in Poland.
“I kept thinking to myself, forget the gas chambers, forget the random acts of violence, forget all of the pain and misery that these people were going through; how did they survive one night in those concentration camps?” Berkley said of her trip. “All of a sudden, I realized I was filling up with pride because the fact that we managed to survive one night in that concentration camp is a tribute, a tribute to the Jewish people and our love of life and our desire to survive.”
Jan. 27 is known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and communities around the globe come together to honor the 6 million Jewish people who were killed during the Holocaust and the millions of other victims who died as a result of Nazi persecution during World War II.
It’s also the anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp liberation, when advancing Soviet soldiers freed about 7,000 prisoners from the Nazis’ Auschwitz, Birkenau and Monowitz concentration camps.
Hillel of Las Vegas, a local Jewish organization, sponsored Monday’s event. Cosponsors were the Jewish-Faculty Staff Group, the UNLV department of history, the Office of Diversity Initiatives and the Governor’s Advisory Council on Education Relating to the Holocaust.
The event began with remarks from UNLV Executive Vice President and Provost Chris Heavey, Berkley and Clark County Commissioner Michael Naft.
Berkley warned the crowd that people needed to be vigilant and vocal in making sure that all minority communities “are treated with the dignity that human beings deserve.”
Sonny Vinuya from the office of the governor presented a certificate from Gov. Joe Lombardo proclaiming Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Nevada.
Naft, during his speech, said that marking occasions like the 80th anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau liberation was “even more important” now than ever as antisemitism “skyrockets and continues to plague our communities.”
In April 2024, the Anti-Defamation League released its annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents and found that antisemitism rose significantly in 2023.
The Anti-Defamation League recorded 8,873 antisemitic incidents across the country, a 140% increase from the 3,698 incidents recorded the year before — making it the highest number on record since the organization began tracking these events in 1979.
A “dramatic increase in incidents” occurred following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas in Israel, but even excluding the 5,204 events tabulated from that day to the end of the year, record-breaking monthly increases of antisemitism were reported during February, March, April, May and September.
Part of Monday’s ceremony at UNLV, which included a candlelighting to honor victims and a prayer, was also to educate attendees on the significance of Holocaust and genocide education today. It was an especially important topic considering the rise of Holocaust denial and misinformation in Nevada and the U.S.
“I think it’s really important that we benefit from the Holocaust Education Center right now housed in the governor’s office, but making sure that they have a platform to spread that information as broadly as possible, that as many students as possible have the opportunity to view the artifacts and learn from those lesson cards is really important,” Naft said. “It is so important to both creating a world where people understand one another but preventing such atrocities from happening again. Education is proving a silver bullet as it is with most things.”
A survey commissioned by the Nevada Governor’s Advisory Council on Education Relating to the Holocaust revealed in 2024 that Holocaust denial and distortion was increasing in Nevada, and young adults were especially prone to possessing inaccurate knowledge of the genocide.
Of the 1,400 survey-takers, 54% of respondents could not correctly define antisemitism as prejudice against Jewish people and 14% said they know someone who doesn’t think the Holocaust happened or attempt to minimize its casualties.
About 8% believed the number of Jews killed has been “greatly exaggerated” — a form of Holocaust distortion that also includes blaming Jews, minimizing the number of victims or otherwise intentionally obscuring facts regarding the Holocaust.
Naft added that he would “continue to champion in the Legislature and elsewhere” that funds be made to support education about the Holocaust and genocide.
In addition to Monday’s event, graduate students in the UNLV department of history — with support from the Nevada Center for Humanity — have curated and displayed historic artifacts, images and texts from the 1920s through 1940s related to the Holocaust.
It explains the rise in power of the Nazi Party in Germany that eventually led to the oppression and attempted genocide of Jewish, Romani and other populations of people by the German Reich and their collaborators.
The exhibit, named “The Holocaust: Reconstructing Shattered Humanity,” also traces the liberation of concentration camps and the International Tribunal at Nuremberg.
Curators said the exhibit “focused on the experiences of Jews and others not only as victims but also as resistors, refugees and resilient survivors,” even featuring efforts of “upstanders” who aided and protected those targeted.
“The Holocaust: Reconstructing Shattered Humanity” opened in November and will be on display through mid-March in the Las Vegas office of the governor.
“I think we have to fight very hard every single day to make sure that something like this could never happen again, and I don’t only mean to the Jewish people. I believe that we must be protective of each other, or we are due as humanity to have this happen again,” Berkley said. “I am so proud of my alma mater. I am so proud of what you are doing here today. You’re making a difference and ensuring that what happened in the past is not prologue to the future, and it restores my faith in humanity.”