Florida Holocaust Museum hosts reading of 10,000 names of victims: 'We tell their story'

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - The Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg hosted an uninterrupted reading of close to 10,000 names of Holocaust victims from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah.

Helen Kahan, a Holocaust survivor, and her daughter, Livia Wein, were some of the readers, and some of the names were their family members.

"It was truly one of the most emotional experiences of remembering," Wein said. "We feel it's very important, because when you recall their names, you feel like they continue to be remembered and be part of us. Remembering is one of the main purposes of this and the form of survival, I guess. It's hopefully, also it is something to fight hate in the world today. There's tremendous hate in the world today."

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Kahan also turned 101 years old on Monday, but for her and her family, the day signifies so much more. 

"The big celebration is that you survived and are here. That's the big celebration today, that you're a survivor. You survived all the hate," Wein told her mother, who was wearing a 101 birthday crown, before they sang happy birthday to her.

Eighty years ago, Kahan turned 21 the same day she arrived at Auschwitz.

"Her 21st birthday was probably the most miserable birthday," Wein said. "It was when she was put on a cattle car and arrived at Auschwitz. So, that was probably the most tragic birthday. She also watched her mother being taken away with four siblings and people around her were telling her, ‘don't worry, you won't see them again. They're going straight to the gas chambers.’"

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Several other community members, including local leaders, read names for seven hours straight, just scratching the surface of the six million Holocaust victims.

"It's a number that it's like difficult or impossible to get our heads around, but when you start recognizing that everyone was a father, a son, a child, a sibling, that's when the importance and the value and the weight of Holocaust education starts to hit you as a person," Michael Igel, the museum’s interim CEO, said. "This, today's names reading, does it so viscerally."

Wein said her mom has opened up more in the past few years about what she experienced. She said their family keeps her going.

"The triumph of all of it is that she has two children, five grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren, and tons and tons of supporters from the museum and friends and even hospice," Wein said. "She is with the hospice people and they're very supportive. It's just fabulous … Just had a lot of wishes for her birthday, and flowers, and so she is surrounded by love."

"Our survivors are really our engine in our fuel," Igel said. "One of the things that keeps me going, no matter how hard it gets, is knowing that there are survivors in the world that can see that there are people out there in their honor fighting every single day and knowing that they can at least smile."

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Igel said some of the names he read Monday were his family members, including his great-grandparents’ names. 

"Every time we utter someone's name, we tell their story," he said. "They live, and that is the ultimate victory and that's one of the main reasons that we do what we do today, where we read names of the victims all day."

Igel said since the Hamas attacks on Israel in October, they’ve had heightened security. 

"Many museums when they speak of security, they speak of security of their artifacts, which we do too, you know, the over 22,000 of them, but we have to really tighten our security on a constant basis as it relates to the people, young and old, who come in here," he said. "And the saddest part of that is it's because we are an institution that exists to honor the victims of genocide. That shouldn't be something that's controversial or put anyone at safety risk."

According to Igel, they also recently started a construction project to increase security measures, like adding ballistic glass to the building.

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