The Power of Religion
As religion seems to be becoming a bigger issue in today’s society, it is something that is very important to many people in the world. According to ABC News, 83% of americans today classify themselves as christians, leaving 4% as non-christian believers and 13% as non-religious believers overall. Considering the millions of people living in America, religion takes up most of the population. However, not all religion is treated the same. As Christians dominate America, the 4% of the non-christian believers, Jewish being one of the faiths, seem to be left out. Not only do they seem to be forgotten now, but in history as well. The Holocaust was a big event that happened in history, scarring the Jewish religion for the rest of time. Fortunately, people today have been speaking out and helping the many Jewish people in finding their voice. The National Center for Jewish Healing has allowed Jewish people to cope with the hard times in history. As religion becomes more accepting today, this is a very important topic to understand. It has kept the community as a whole, and created peace, but it can still be greatly improved over time, accepting everyone and what they believe.
The Holocaust Survivors Friendship Association did an interview with Val Ginsburg on his survival of the Holocaust in the mid 1900’s. The Holocaust was a time in World History that many would like to forget. However, for the nearly six million Jews whom Nazi armies murdered in an attempt to exterminate the Jewish population from Europe, it serves as a reminder of the social prejudice and inequality of religion during the early 1940’s. Val Ginsburg was born in Lithuania, a small country between Germany and Russia. He was raised in a Jewish family, but did not follow orthodox Jewish traditions. He had hopes of studying architecture. However his studies were cut short when the Nazi’s confiscated his family’s land and he was forced into slave labor and sub-human living condition in the ghetto in Kaunas. He lived through two mass murder events called the “Big Action” and the “Children’s Action”. The first resulted in the murder of 10,000 Jews and the second terminated the children, sick, and disabled from the ghetto. Eventually, Val was taken to Germany and forced in factories to produce military jets while barely surviving on starvation rations. Once he was liberated from Germany, he was the sole survivor of his family. He met his bride in the hospital while recovering from the war, and eventually moved to England where they raised their two children. Val did not speak of his Holocaust experience until his children were grown. He became involved in several Holocaust Survivors Friendship Association projects to raise young people’s awareness of the consequences of prejudice. Val passed away in 2011, but his story must be told. He was an ordinary man, and Val’s story is similar to other Holocaust experiences. As the survivors of the Holocaust are nearing the end of their lives, the fear is that their stories will die with them, and soon people may forget about the awful things that occurred in the mid 1900’s.
The National Center for Jewish Healing is an organization designed to help nurture hope and fortify coping with Jewish people in Jewish Healing Centers or other communal settings. These centers of care are located throughout the United States, giving Jews a chance to speak out and help cope with the challenging times in their life and their early history. They give many courses to help better fit the people with specific needs. The center of healing helps Jews that are lost, to find their way in the world. The importance of the community in these healing centers keeps growing and is helping Jewish people out everyday.
As religion continues to grow in the world, it is important that people grow to understand and appreciate every type of faith. Val Ginsburg survived the the insane event in history known as the Holocaust. Millions of jews were executed, and only few survived this horrible event. Today, the National Center of Jewish Healing is reaching out and helping the jews that are stuck in the world with no voice. They have helped these fellow jews find their voice and talk about their hard times in life. The search for a cure to these hard times have scratched the surface of helping the horrible history of Jews, but it is important that more people start to accept that not all people are the same.
Works Cited:
"Val Gunsburg." Holocaust Learning. Holocaust Survivors Friendship Association, 2010. Web. 10 Feb. 2016.
<http://holocaustlearning.org/survivors/val-ginsburg>.
"About Us - The National Center of Jewish Healing." The National Center of Jewish Healing. Jewish Connection
Program, n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2016. <http://www.ncjh.org/about.html>.