David Lenga, 95, Ariel Ein-Gal, 26, met at the Reagan Library’s Auschwitz Exhibition to recount their shared trauma and the antisemitism that persists decades apart.
Lenga is a Holocaust survivor and a Hamas attack survivor met this morning at the Reagan Library to take in the history that separates them, but acknowledge that some things never seem to change.
Lenga was imprisoned at the Nazi camp during World War II. He told a story of German troops opening fire on his hometown in Poland.
“They machine-gunned everything and everybody in sight,” Lenga said. “At 11 years of age, I was seeing a river of blood.”
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Ein-Gal and some friends were a few hundred yards from the Gaza border on Oct. 7 when they saw the Hamas attack before their eyes. They awoke to explosions at 6:30 a.m.
“They shot hundreds of rounds in our direction,” Ein-Gal said. “We managed to escape … barely.”
Ein-Gal lost friends that day and will never forget the carnage.
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The similarities in their stories are obvious, Ein-Gal and Lenga told NBC4. Decades have passed, but the Jewish people are united once again in grief — targeted and running for their lives.
“It’s just unbelievable, how history repeats itself,” Lenga said.
Ein-Gal echoed this sentiment. “We’re seeing it right now, right here,” Ein-Gal said. “They are happening … again.”
Both men said they still have hope after everything that has happened — hope, they told us, that hate can still be defeated through exhibits like that of the Auschwitz Exhibition, retellings of experiences like theirs as well as Jews and non-Jews joining to fight it whenever it rears its ugly head.
