Statement by President Lawrence S. Bacow at the ‘Hate Ends Now’ Exhibit hosted by Harvard Hillel on April 24, 2023.
For many of you, this cattle car is a reminder of the consequences of hatred and bigotry.
For me, it is far more.
On September 14, 1942, my mother, Ruth, was packed into a cattle car like this one with her family and the other Jews from her hometown of Londorf, Germany. They were being transported to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic. Many of them died en route, the living and the dead jammed together.
A few years later, my mother and her family were packed into another cattle car bound for Auschwitz. Her parents and her sister died there. She was forced to work. She was transported again. She survived unspeakable conditions.
In early January of 1945, the Russians liberated my mother. She was the only survivor among her family, the only survivor among the people who had been transported from her hometown—one of 120.
She was 18 years old. She was the same age as our first-year students in Harvard College.
For many of you, this cattle car is a reminder of the consequences of hatred and bigotry.
For me, it is the family I never met.
