 Ladies and gentlemen, let me first introduce myself. I'm Dramigo Salazar, Director of the San Antonio Public Library. We have all of our partners for this wonderful initiative, the Holocaust Learning Remembrance, I'd like to extend to all of you a very warm welcome. This is our seventh annual commemoration of the Holocaust Learning Remembrance. We're so proud that we're already on seven years and it's been made possible to the many partners that have participated, which I will identify shortly. We'd like to acknowledge the Mayor, thank you for being here and helping us launch this year's Learning Remembrance. We also have a special welcome to Ms. Varda Ratner, who will be speaking about her story as a second-generation Holocaust survivor. She will be introduced shortly. And again, I mentioned about the different partners at the San Antonio Public Library Foundation, one of our major partners, but of course the Holocaust Memorial Museum under the directorship of Ellen Olavipis, I whispered it with that one, Ellen, have been a great partner working together to pick up and to make available to the learners to remember and make it possible quite frankly. So, I do have a couple of individuals that I'd like to recognize. We have a special guest, Judge Nelson Wolfe. Thank you so much, Judge, for being here. We appreciate your presence, but your continued support for the San Antonio Public Library and for the community in general. Thank you so much for being here. We also have a member of the Library Board of Trustees, Marcy Inns, representing District 9. Thank you, Marcy, for being here. Ambassador Sieg, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, we appreciate your support. The story behind how this initiative got started and there's a kind of partnering prime, if I can say that, who's my good friend, Howard Nestle, he will tell you the story behind it of how this initiative came to be and the purpose of using this initiative to teach tolerance, especially in these times, where there's so much to the advice of them. So, he'll tell you that and then he'll introduce the mayor for some remarks. Howard? Thank you, Ramil. Good morning, everybody, I'm Howard Nestle. And as Ramil have said, this initiative started seven years ago and with the auspices that there is no more powerful tool than education to be able to change the world. And so what started off as a casual breakfast conversation and an innocent question by Ramil asking me, is there any kind of program, city-wide program about Holocaust education here in San Antonio that you know about? And I said, well, the Jewish community puts one on every year, it's more of a memorial service and a commemoration. And he said, well, why don't we do one? What would that look like? So, we did one and I remember, one member was a councilman back then we had Mayor Julian Castro, we invited him to the first one. And I don't know if I subconsciously said it but I introduced the mayor and I said, welcome to the first annual Holocaust, remember? And then it kept going that way and then afterwards Ramil said, I guess we're gonna do this every year and I guess we are. So now here we are seven years later. So what the Holocaust learner remember has become is an annual city-wide free educational program of speakers, storytelling, audio, video presentations, art, exhibits, you name it, at branch libraries across the city, at Central Library and here at the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio. Over the past six years and now this is the seventh year, we've had thousands of San Antonio citizens, children, parents, grandparents all listening to fascinating stories, first-hand experiences and also knowledge by college professors about topics related to the Holocaust. We've covered survivors, liberators, we've covered art, we've covered refugee in the Americas and this year's theme resistance. For all of the exhibits and programs and speakers, I encourage you to go to learnandremember.org. We have them all listed there. The San Antonio Public Library has listings on their website. I believe the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio has listings there and I encourage you all to get involved. These are all free and open to the public events at branch libraries all over the city and you will be fascinated by what you hear. I have them, I put them all on my schedule and I try to get around the city to get to as many as I can and I highly encourage you all to do the same. Share it with your friends and encourage them to come. I want to stay up here and talk too long so I want to introduce somebody who helped us get this program started back when he was a city councilman for district eight which is this district right here and now the mayor of San Antonio and hopefully our next mayor of San Antonio, Mr. Ron Nervar. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. It's an honor to join you. We're not in a library right now but I have to think that all those years ago that Nelson and Tracy were working hard to fund and to bring vision to our library system. You was thinking about partnerships just like this and it's a great time to reflect on where we are as a community because I think a few weeks ago you may have seen some news where someone, we don't know who, posted a sign outside the door that said fake news pointing over here. If there was ever an indication that we need facilities and we need opportunities like this to remind ourselves not only of the persecution of Jews and others around the world but also the responsibility that we have to educate our young people, to educate our neighbors, to educate our friends and family about the suffering and the incredible danger that lurks without proper tolerance and education it is these times we're living in right now that best illustrates that. This is a facility that I hope every San Antonio gets to see at one point during their residence here. As you can see that some of the images are not easy to look at. The stories behind them are even harder to hear but you have to also realize that this is modern day Europe. Imagine that. In our lifetime this occurred and without the incredible leadership of people during that time and now in our time to pull us through to focus on compassion and tolerance and diversity we maybe would have seen dark times like that persist. And it's true, we don't live in a perfect world. There are justices in justices even today which makes these remembrances so incredibly important. I'm honored to be here. Howie, I'm truly grateful for the work that you and Romino and all of your supporters do to put on the Learn and Remember series every year. It is one of the things that I hope you take a lot of pride in about our library system here in San Antonio. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for carrying the message of the Holocaust Memorial Museum out into our community every single day. And thank you Ms. Radner for being with us today. The stories that you hear during the Learn and Remember series are probably the most powerful part of the entire initiative. And it's because of your bravery and the folks that have spoken to us before that we get to not only see this as something that took place in our world but also see ourselves in it and the responsibility that we have to make sure that it happens never again. So thank you very much. Thank you again, Mayor, for being here. For this launching of this year's Learn and Remember. So with any great initiative and successful initiative it takes a collective effort. Different partners coming together. A key partner for the Learn and Remember is the Holocaust Memorial Museum and the support of the Jewish Community Center. And so it's my pleasure to invite you to the podium. Alonso Colnevere, who is the director and the leader of the museum and a dynamic leader that has worked very closely with the library and the library staff, both of our staff work very well together, very effectively and so I'm very proud to invite Alonso to the podium and she will introduce our special guest today, Alonso. Thank you. Thank you and welcome. My name is Alonso Avidas and I serve as the director of the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio. And it is my pleasure to introduce you to a dear friend of the museum and a tireless advocate for Holocaust education, Barton Ratner. Varda is a second generation survivor and a senior docent here at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Please help me welcome Barton Ratner. My name is Varda. My understanding here before you today, thanks to three Holocaust resistors. One of them was my mother, Alona Handel. Another was a Hungarian Righteous Gentile, Amch Oros. And the other was Carl Lutz, a little known Swiss diplomat. If it weren't for their bravery and morality, my mother would not have survived and therefore I would never have existed, neither with my brothers, my children, their children, all of their children, nor any of the generations to come. My mother resisted in a few ways. She escaped capture in a roundup of her section of the ghetto in Budapest. After being caught during a later one, she escaped again. She snuck out of the ghetto repeatedly without wearing a yellow scarf, pretending to be a non-Jew in order to get protective papers. She took part in the forgery of those protective papers that saved over 100 Jews herself. After moving out of the ghetto into a building under Swiss protection and eventually being captured and taken away on a death march, she escaped again. She hid in the apartment of a Gentile for the rest of the war. Amch Oros was that righteous Gentile. Amch had been the housekeeper for my mother's family back when Jews were still allowed to employ non-Jews. When my mother escaped the death march, along with my grandmother, she, well, they, looked at each other and said, now what? They decided to go to the home of a World War I comrade of my grandfather to see if he would help. Upon arrival at his home and at his wife's home, they initially were accepted in. A few hours later, though, my mother overheard them talking, saying that they were going to turn them in. As soon as feasible, my mother and grandmother snuck out of that house and headed to Anusha's apartment, unable to think of any other possible refuge. Anusha and her mother were very happy to see that my mother and grandmother were actually still alive. And they ushered them quickly inside. Anusha and her mother lived in a two-room apartment. They gave my mother and grandmother their room to sleep in and took to sleeping on the kitchen floor themselves. My mother and grandmother remained there for the rest of the war. Carl Lutz was vice consul to the Swiss consulate general in Palestine in the early 1940s. My mother's brother had already emigrated there from Budapest. He heard that Lutz was going to be reassigned to Budapest and would be giving out papers of Swiss protection to Jews in Hungary. My uncle sent my mother and grandmother a letter encouraging them to try to get these papers of Swiss protection. The Hungarian government and the Nazis had authorized Carl Lutz to give the papers of protection to 9,000 Jews who were under Nazi threat in Hungary. Instead, he ended up deliberately using this permission for 9,000 as applying to families rather than individuals, thus issuing tens of thousands of additional protective letters. My mother, not knowing this, thought she needed to flirt with the clerk at the consulate to get the papers. She snuck out of the ghetto and dodged falling bombs to get to the Swiss consulate to ask for papers for herself and her mother. That night, after having gotten those papers, she couldn't sleep because she realized she should have gotten them for her aunt and cousin, too. Those were her closest relatives. The next day, she went back, flirted with the clerk again, and told him that she needed two more for other family members. Well, that night, she couldn't sleep again because she was thinking about more of her family members from whom she hadn't gotten papers. So she went back and saw the same clerk yet again. When she begged him to give her more, he asked her if she had a typewriter. She did. He then put the official stamp and seal on over 100 papers of Swiss protection and told her to fill in whatever names she wanted and give them out to whomever she wanted. Which this she did with her typewriter, and then she gave them to every family member and friend who needed them. Little did my mother know that the vice consul was Carl Lutz. Nor did she know that he was allowing all of his clerks to give out these protective papers so generously. In fact, Carl Lutz had been authorized, as I said before, to give out approximately 9,000 papers of Swiss protection. But he and his staff actually provided over 62,000 of these papers in an effort to save as many Jews as possible. He was a hero to so many, resisting the Nazis in order to do what was right and humane. This year's learning remember allows us to learn about resistors and to remember that we should make the kind of choices that they did when faced with brutal and unconscionable treatment of fellow human beings, to act with bravery and morality. Thank you. Thank you so much. So in closing, I want to again thank you all for being here. A special thanks to one near and dear, our mayor. I'm not closing yet. I'll bring my closer remarks after that. Is there ever a time to remain silent, unmoved, dispassionate, indifferent? Is there ever a time when we collectively think what is, at the very least, humane? Learning remember 2019 focused the attention on resistance during the Holocaust. What did it look like? Who can we thank for showing us away? What consequences emerged? What lingering effects did it have? Through the lens of resistance, we remember the ways in which human beings came to the aid and rescue of other human beings. We can examine the brightest moments in a dark history. I'm reminded of a story about a French village, Le Chameau. You see, the people of this village came together to determine the best possible outcome for all. And an all or nothing conclusion was drawn. They were all in or were all out. These villagers took a tremendous risk and expressed their great humanity by choosing to hide some 5,000 refugees, including several thousand Jews, therefore escaping nonce persecution. This community in this village had experienced persecution in the past and understood. And the collective memory of their own suffering as a religious minority created strong suspicion of authoritarian government. They remembered and they acted. While reading the classic novel entitled Bless Me Ultima, I found a passage so thoughtful, so thoughtful I have found it unforgettable. It was written, every generation, every man is a part of this past. He cannot escape it, but he may reform the old material and make something new. Let us together resist the trend in forgetting our past and let us shape a better future with this history and mind. A very special thank you to the San Antonio Public Library Foundation, the Jewish Federation of San Antonio, and to the amazing staff members of the Public Library and the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and to the many performers and presenters who have so eagerly accepted our invitation to teach. Following Romero's remarks, please stay. We invite you to stay, enjoy refreshments, meet new friends, greet old friends, and we look forward to seeing you at the Learning Member event. So in closing, again, thank you all for being here. Thank you, Mayor, for being here. Thank you, Judge Wolfe, for being here and joining us in this event. And thank you to my special partner, Hawi, and of course, Alan, and the Holocaust Memorial Museum. I want to invite you all to attend and participate in the many events that we will be having throughout the month of January and part of February. You can visit several websites, mysatl.org, or hnmsa.org, or learnandremember.org, for additional information regarding the different events that we will be having. I believe we have cards available for distribution. So please take one with you. I, too, want to join Alan and acknowledge the staff who work very hard behind the scenes to make this happen. Dr. Haley Holmes and our part is our lead in this initiative, so I wanted to recognize her. But again, thank you so much for being here. And your words, Ms. Ratner, certainly resonate. And it reminds us to stand up and take action when we see injustice. So thank you so much for sharing your personal story. It was very inspirational. Again, thank you all. Please stay for refreshments. And again, thank you.