100-year-old Holocaust survivor shares his story in Tracy to make sure people never forget
TRACY - It's not every day you get to use 21st-century technology to talk to a 20th-century icon.
Rabbi Meijers heads up the Chabad of Tracy Jewish Center, and as he sat next to 100-year-old Holocaust survivor Joseph Alexander, he said "We're sitting next to history."
On Wednesday night, he shared his story to a packed house in Tracy.
Joseph Alexander survived 12 different camps, including Auschwitz and Dachau. You can still see his camp serial number tattooed on his arm.
He said, "A lot of people asked me, 'Did you ever want to remove the tattoo?' I said 'no, It always reminds me of what I went through.'"
Joseph has spent decades sharing his story with people from all over the world.
When he was asked why, he simply said, "What can we do? It has to be told so that the world should never forget."
Rabbi Meijers adds that when we understand that, it can help us move forward.
"We can focus on the atrocities and the hate, on the anti-semitism. But we have another option, and that's to focus on moving forward and loving one another, bringing kindness into this world," he said. "Go and spread the word and let the people know what happened to try and get rid of anti-semitism."
He recently traveled overseas to help commemorate the liberation of Dachau. Soon, he'll travel to South Dakota, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania to continue sharing his story.
