Preview: UA hosts Holocaust remembrance event

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Jared Ferguson, Contributing Writer

The Holocaust will forever be remembered as a point in history that impacted the lives of many, and today, The University of Alabama will host Ann M. Mollengarden, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, who will recount the story of her father.

Mollengarden is the vice president of the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center and a second-generation Holocaust survivor. Her father, Robert May, will be the subject of the event’s presentation.

At the time of Nazi Germany’s flourishment, May was known to the Jewish community in Germany due to his father’s role as a religious official of a synagogue that housed more than a dozen Jewish families. After May’s classmates joined the Hitler Youth, he and his family were taken to a concentration camp when he was just a child.

The event will be hosted by The University of Alabama’s Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in cooperation with Bloom Hillel, the Chabad Jewish Student Group, the Faculty Senate Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the Jewish Law Students Association and Temple Emanu-El. Mollengarden will speak in the ballroom of the Ferguson Student Center and discuss May’s hardships as an occasion of remembrance of the consequences of anti-Semitism.

Mollengarden’s intention in sharing her father’s story is meant to be a cautionary tale due to the slow recent return of anti-Semitism in the United States. Mollengarden seeks to enlighten about hardships that numerous individuals in modern society might not have personal experience with but regardless should be informed of as a way of remembering the victims so that history is not repeated.

Mollengarden’s speech will be open to the public of Tuscaloosa in the ballroom of the Ferguson Student Center at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 9th.