February 7, 2026
Together, we raised an incredible $1.6 million at To Life: Act & Inspire! I am extremely grateful to our community and this museum. It was a pleasure to serve as co-chair for this event. My remarks from that evening presenting the Legacy Award to Florida’s Holocaust Survivors is below:
Good evening.
It is my honor to be here with you tonight as co-chair of the To Life Gala. And together with my fellow co-chair, Andy Gaunce, I want to thank you for showing up—for this Museum, for this mission, and for one another.
The theme of this evening is Act & Inspire.
Acting means showing up and speaking up—clearly, publicly, and without apology—when antisemitism shows itself.
It means refusing to be silent.
It means supporting institutions like the Florida Holocaust Museum not just with our words, but with our resources.
And it means insisting that Holocaust education remains factual, rigorous, and central to our civic life.
Inspiring means taking these stories beyond these walls—
so future generations inherit not silence, confusion, or denial,
but clarity, empathy, and courage.
Jewish Americans make up just two percent of the U.S. population.
And yet Jews are the targets of sixty-eight percent of all religion-based hate crimes in America.
From 2020 to 2024, the Anti-Defamation League reported nearly a 350 percent increase in antisemitic incidents.
History teaches us something uncomfortable—but consistent.
When a society turns on its Jewish population, it does not stabilize.
It escalates.
And it never stays contained.
That is why antisemitism is often described as the canary in the coal mine—an early warning sign that intolerance is becoming acceptable, and that something fundamental is beginning to erode.
That is why what we are seeing today demands our full attention.
In a 2023 poll, one in five Americans under thirty said they believe the Holocaust is a myth.
Another three in ten said they were unsure.
That’s HALF of young Americans expressed doubt about whether the Holocaust—the most documented genocide in human history—was real.
And if the Holocaust can be denied,
then history can be rewritten,
and hatred can be justified.
And since October 7, we have entered an entirely new world.
Two months ago, on the first night of Hanukkah, a mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia became the largest killing of Jews since October 7—and the deadliest mass shooting in that country in more than thirty years.
Hatred spreads.
And violence follows.
This is why this Museum matters.
This is why tonight matters.
It matters deeply to me and to my family.
Our grandmother, Helen Kahan—known simply as Bubbi—was deported to Auschwitz on her twenty-first birthday. An age meant for dreams and possibility.
Instead, her parents and siblings were murdered. She endured starvation, forced labor, and brutality before escaping during a death march.
She was a survivor.
But she did not survive in silence.
Bubbi chose life.
She rebuilt.
She raised a family.
And she told her story—because she believed memory is not passive; it is protective.
She spent dozens of hours answering more than a thousand questions for the Dimensions in Testimony project, because she understood what was at stake.
In many ways, this Museum is an embodiment of her story.
And tonight, we honor Holocaust survivors not as symbols—but as teachers.
They are living witnesses to where hatred leads, and to what courage, resilience, and moral clarity can build in its aftermath.
At this time, I would like to ask any Holocaust survivors here with us tonight—if you are able—to please stand.
And I would also like to ask the children, grandchildren, and caregivers of Holocaust survivors—whether your loved one is here tonight or not—to please stand and be recognized.
Thank you. Please be seated.
Tonight we make a promise to you.
That memory will not fade into history.
That truth will be taught, protected, and defended.
And that your stories will continue to protect the future.
These promises are not symbolic.
They require institutions.
They require educators.
They require resources.
They require all of us.
You have the opportunity to give tonight, and I hope you will give from your heart—and give generously. Because the cost of education is real.
But the cost of forgetting is far greater.
