Ann Jaffe will share her personal account of how she survived the Holocaust on Oct. 10 at 4 p.m. in the Taylor Auditorium in McCool Hall at Mississippi State University.
Jerome Gilbert, provost and executive vice president, said students who come to see Jaffe speak will come away with a perspective added to their lives they would not have otherwise.
“Students will come away with a feeling of seeing something that is moving and can have an impact on their lives in an emotional, spiritual and educational way,” Gilbert said.
Hearing Jaffe speak is a dimension of realism that is very powerful. Her speech may be the first time students have heard a first-hand account from someone who experienced a horrible event that happened in history, he said.
This is the last generation of college students who will get to hear a first-hand account from a Holocaust survivor. Within the next 20 years, Holocaust survivors may be deceased, so it is important for students to go  hear Jaffe speak, Gilbert said.
He also said students are able to ask questions after Jaffe is finished speaking.
Alexandra Hui, department of history assistant professor, teaches a course on the Holocaust. She said Jaffe’s speech will have a personal and moving impact and will help humanize the story and give it a face.
Hui said students acknowledge the Holocaust but have not taken the time to process it and make it part of their identities.
“It’s a knee-jerk reaction to push it away and ignore things(…)and say they didn’t happen to me,” Hui said. “The Holocaust is one of those few horrific events in which people acknowledge it happened and are actively trying to process it. It has to be (processed) to avoid it happening again.”
 
Hui said she hopes students will gain the courage from Jaffe to examine the terrible moments of history.
“The past is who you are,” Hui said. “Humanity’s past is something you need to know about.”
Jaffe will speak about intolerance and anti-Semitism and how they factored into the Nazi’s goal of exterminating an entire race of people, Gilbert said.
Hui said Jaffe’s presence on campus speaks of the dangers of fascism, anti-Semitism, violent nationalism and the way politics can be high-jacked by a single group. Students who attend the event can learn from people like Jaffe who have the courage and strength to speak out about a horrific event.
“It’s scary every time,” Hui said. “There is always a risk (to speaking out). These Holocaust deniers will show up in the strangest places and just be terrible. There is also the risk of people not caring, which in some ways seems worst. I think she faces that every time she gets up to speak.”
Jaffe’s story differs from Anne Frank’s story in that people know of Frank’s optimism and her hiding, but people are unaware of her feelings on experiencing the concentration camp where she died. Frank did not survive to tell us what happened after she was captured; Jaffe, however, can go further in explaining the events of the Holocaust, Hui said.
“We have a very incomplete picture of Anne Frank’s experience,” Hui said. “In some ways, she cannot tell us about the Holocaust because she did not survive it.”
 
 
 
 
Hui said one of the benefits of Ann Jaffe speaking is she gives a complete story.
Gilbert said he is looking forward to the event.
“It’s great that we’re able to bring her here,” Gilbert said. “I’m excited to hear her in person. It’s going to be a powerful experience.”
Hui said knowing someone who has survived the Holocaust adds more gravity to everything he or she says. Her colleague, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Saul Friedländer, survived the Holocaust and Hui said being around him inspires her.
“You take him very seriously,” she said. “(He) inspires you to try and make your work less trite and more important and hopefully also have a place in making humanity more human.”
Hui said Friedländer told her to constantly strive to understand the Holocaust.
“If we were to ever decide we had figured out the Holocaust and said ‘ok we’re done’ and put it in a box and set it aside, that box would be covered with dust and it would be forgotten about,” Hui said.
Bill Kibler, vice president for student affairs, said students should go see Ann Jaffe speak, because she has an incredible account to tell about one of the most important chapters in the history of the last century.
“What her family went through is representative of what many millions of Jewish people went through in Germany during World War II,” Kibler said. “It’s always more compelling to hear a first-person account than it is to read about it in a history book.”