I was only thirteen when I was asked where my horns were. At the time, I had no idea what that even meant. Little did I know, that stereotype — the idea that Jews have horns — was a centuries-old stereotype rooted in misinformation. It was my first encounter with overt antisemitism, but certainly not my last.

This past October, I was walking to class in FAU’s breezeway when I saw a student holding up a sign that read: “Was Hitler objectively evil?” allowing students to vote if they agreed or disagreed. Shockingly enough, a few students had answered ‘no.’

These incidents made one thing clear to me: local and state education systems do not cover Holocaust education enough or the lasting impact of antisemitism. 

Motivated by this, I recently traveled to Poland this past December through FAU Hillel, a Jewish on-campus organization, on a Holocaust remembrance and education trip, part of the Florida Hillels Fellowship. 

Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau was something no textbook or movie could prepare me for.

The trip included students from FAU, the University of Florida (UF), Florida State University (FSU), the University of Central Florida (UCF), the University of Miami (UM), Nova Southeastern University and Florida International University (FIU). 

“Before this trip, I thought I knew a lot about the Holocaust, but unfortunately, what I knew didn’t even scratch the surface,” said Emily Starr, a senior advertising major at the University of Florida who attended the trip. “I learned more this one week in Poland than I did throughout all of my education in 21 years.” 

My Holocaust education in school was surface level at best. It felt like a checkbox in the curriculum —brief, clinical, and lacked the emotional depth it deserves.

While my high school curriculum emphasized the 6 million Jews that were murdered during the Holocaust, it often failed to explain the human stories behind the numbers — the lives lost, the resilience of survivors, and life after the Holocaust. 

It’s clear that the Florida Department of Education doesn’t prioritize Holocaust education to the point where students are left misinformed and inadequately educated. In 2023, the Florida Department of Education rejected one textbook and one online course that covered the history of the Holocaust. 

Additionally, in 2020, the Florida Senate passed Bill 1008 which mandated the annual teaching of Holocaust history in school curriculum. However, in 2022, Florida House Bill 1467 allowed parents to challenge instructional materials, which resulted in the removal of Holocaust education, as parents ‘felt it was inappropriate’. 

These mixed policies show how Florida is failing its students by stripping away critical Holocaust education that children need to understand vital history.

And so, we ask ourselves, ‘What does ‘Never Again’ mean? ‘Never Again’ isn’t just about learning about the Holocaust; it’s about honoring the survivors’ stories, carrying their stories forward, and actively standing against antisemitism in all its forms.

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Zoe Dahan

The entrance gate to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

“We say ‘Never Again,’ but it’s not going to be because we’re just saying it,” Lauren Oback, the FAU Hillel director, said. “It’s because we have those emotions. We have that struggle within us now, and that is something that can only be experienced through going to Poland. It’s not going to be enough to hear the stories and to learn in a textbook.”

Attacks on synagogues, hundreds of innocent people held hostage, baseless conspiracy theories, and casual jokes about Jewish stereotypes all fuel the same fire that led to one of history’s darkest chapters.

“But if you look around today, you’ll see an alarming increase in the rise of antisemitism, and a lot of hatred for Israel and all of this, much of it is fueled by the internet, where anybody can say anything they want and frequently do,” said Alan Berger, FAU Holocaust Chair and Jewish studies professor. “The issue like this is they get a 20 or 25-second piece of information, which frequently isn’t information; it’s anti-information. I see that there’s less and less time for reflection, for investigation, for pursuing information you might want to learn more about.”

For many of the students, the trip offered a personal connection to their Jewish heritage. Growing up, being Jewish was central to my identity. My father is Israeli, and his family immigrated from Morocco to Israel in 1962. On my mother’s side, my distant relatives came from Ukraine and Russia.

Seven summers at a Jewish sleepaway camp, Hebrew school leading to my Bat Mitzvah at 13 – a Jewish coming-of-age ceremony that marks a child’s transition into religious adulthood – and participating in Jewish youth groups in high school all gave me a deep connection to Judaism and Israel. Still, even with this strong foundation, the October incident is when I first realized how little others truly understand the gravity of the Holocaust.

“I think in the Jewish community there’s a strong education about the Holocaust, which is very nice,” said Ilan Nedjar, a senior biology major at Nova Southeastern University who attended the trip. “But in the non-Jewish communities, like in public schools, I think it’s definitely not educated well enough. I know a lot of my friends, they had no idea that there were more than four different concentration camps — they don’t know the extent to what happened.”

Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau, the larger of the two Auschwitz concentration camps, had an emotional impact on Nedjar. 

“It was very emotional to understand how big of a place this was, and obviously seeing all of the ruins of the gas chambers where horrors happened was the deepest experience for me throughout the trip,” said Nedjar. “I remember specifically in Birkenau, we saw the barracks where people would sleep, and I had to step out because it was a little bit too hard to walk through that.” 

Berger said that at the beginning of his Jewish studies course, he distributes a 100-question questionnaire at the beginning of each semester to gauge how much knowledge each student has about the Holocaust.

“The most correct responses I’ve gotten out of the 100 terms have been somewhere between 18 and 20, and that was at the beginning of my career teaching at FAU. So as time goes by, there are fewer questions that are filled in,” said Berger. 

Schools need to do better. Holocaust education can’t just be a quick chapter in history class — it needs to actually educate students on the events and the societal failures that let it happen. Propaganda and misinformation were factors the Nazis used to manipulate public opinion and spread their hateful ideology. The antisemitism that was already present in Europe made it easier for people to accept or ignore the discrimination and violence against Jews.

“People need to understand that these were everyday individuals. These were kids and women and men,” said Spencer Gold, a junior at FAU studying finance who attended the trip. “I think the education should reflect that and that it was very inhumane and factory-like.”

Students should leave school understanding why it still matters today and how they can step up to fight antisemitism and protect human rights.

“When you learn about the Holocaust, it feels like it was a really long time ago and it’s in the past, and you feel like it doesn’t impact you as much, but when you’re actually visiting the camps, it puts it into perspective,” said Nedjar. 

As I stood in Auschwitz-Birkenau, where so many lives were taken, I felt a deep responsibility to carry these stories forward. We owe it to the survivors and victims to make sure their experiences aren’t forgotten and to keep fighting for a world where ‘Never again’ truly means something. 

For Oback, the trip was a way to ensure the memory of the Holocaust was passed on.

“The survivors of the Holocaust are slowly withering away, and we’re not going to have them forever. And when they are no longer able to tell their story, it’s going to be our job,” Oback said. 

So here’s my challenge to you: don’t trust everything you read online. Ask questions. Think critically. Have healthy conversations, even if you don’t agree. Recognize the warning signs of prejudice and misinformation that persist today and challenge them before they grow. Educate yourselves with credible sources, not internet posts. Think twice before you post or share something on social media. Ignorance might be easy, but it’s not harmless. Together, we can do better. We need to. 

Zoe Dahan is a contributing writer for the University Press. For more information regarding this or other stories, email zdahan2024@fau.edu.