Dr. Jacob Eisenbach, a Holocaust survivor and international speaker, will visit Texas A&M on Monday, presenting an opportunity for students and community members to hear a firsthand account of the Holocaust.
Eisenbach will speak to an audience in Rudder Auditorium at an event hosted by Chabad at Texas A&M University. The 96-year-old survivor from Lodz, Poland, will discuss his experiences during the Third Reich and the factors that led to the Holocaust.
Eisenbach immigrated to the United States with his family in 1950 and worked as a dentist for around 60 years. He has traveled extensively to share his story and speak out against intolerance and discrimination.
Chabad co-director Manya Lazaroff said the vision of the event is to educate and empower all Aggies to eliminate hatred from the world.
“We are excited to give Aggies the exceptional opportunity to hear a firsthand account from a Holocaust survivor who lived through all the atrocities,” Lazaroff said. “We are so blessed that TAMU is a warm and loving campus, so we see that the power of bringing such a speaker to our campus is more about augmenting the positive energy of the Aggie spirit and values.”
Lazaroff said interest expressed by Aggies has been immense. Tickets to the event sold out within two weeks of announcement.
“About 3,500 Aggies showed interest in going to the event on our Facebook page,” Lazaroff said. “This only tells us one thing — that the Aggie community is willing to become educated and inspired to be ambassadors of right and goodness.”
Kinesiology senior Josh Williams said he was motivated by the A&M community’s massive response to the event.
“TAMU isn’t a Jewish school and doesn’t have the largest Jewish population, but to see that a lot of Aggies care about the history of Holocaust is just very impactful to me,” Williams said.
According to Lazaroff, Eisenbach said the crowd in Rudder will be the largest he has ever spoken to.
“This says a lot about our Aggie family,” Lazaroff said. “In the future we will be bringing in more speakers in such a great capacity, because if there is such a huge interest, we will need to do something about that.”
Animal science sophomore Benjamin Kaplan said he feels fortunate for the opportunity to hear Eisenbach speak.
“Events like this bring you closer to what happened then,” Kaplan said. “I look forward to similar events that will encourage Aggies to continue to be ambassadors against negativity and hatred for the betterment of humanity.”
Williams said he is particularly inspired to learn from Eisenbach’s resilience as a person who lived through the Holocaust at a young age.
“A lot of the Holocaust survivors that we have today were children during the time of the Holocaust,” Williams said. “Eisenbach is 96-years old. Therefore, he has the perspective of the Holocaust from our age, so it will be as if any of us were there at that time, and that is very rare to find these days.”
This event is particularly timely, Williams said, since the window of opportunity to hear a firsthand account of the Holocaust era from survivors is closing.
“What resonates with me very well is that the Holocaust survivors were the witnesses, and a lot of them are dying because of old age,” Williams said. “As time goes on, we will be the witnesses today, so hearing from them is tremendously important because we are the ones to take that lesson and pass it on.”
More information about the event and the organizations involved is available at tx.ag/Eisenbach.