Ever since kindergarten, my favorite time of the day was story time. As I got older, story time came to be called different things. One year it was Humanities, another year it was AP World History. To me, history is the equivalent of story time.

History and storytelling were forever linked in my mind when I was eight years old. My grandmother, Basha, was diagnosed with breast cancer and she decided it was time to tell me all her stories. That is when I found out that my grandmother was a holocaust survivor.

On a rainy Sunday, I sat beside her and I remember her telling me, “I was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1937.  My earliest memory is of my father being dragged out of a hole in the floor in the room where we were hiding.  Two Polish youths were punching him in the face until blood came out of his mouth.  I was 5 ½ years old.  It was 1943.”

My grandmother is the strongest woman I know. She survived cancer just like she survived the Holocaust, and she smiles every day like nothing evil ever happened in the world. In her honor, I learned all I could about the Holocaust. I read novels through the years from Number the Stars to Sarah’s Key and watched countless films from “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” to “Schindler’s List.”

Living in South Florida, with its vibrant Jewish community, I always thought that something like the Holocaust could never happen again. That naive notion was soon destroyed. During a layover on my way to camp, I was alone in the Atlanta airport. Amongst the hurried steps and thoughts of the people around me, I started talking to a girl my age who was sitting near me. When my Jewish heritage came up in conversation, she looked astonished. I figured it must have been due to my blonde hair and green eyes, which are atypical for Jews.

Instead, she said, “If you are Jewish, then where are your horns?”

I was astonished. I could not believe that someone had never met a Jew let alone that people could think such things about other humans. I realized that stereotypes and prejudice against Jews still exists. I decided that I needed to become a more active participant in the Jewish community. I needed to share the importance of the Jewish culture with other Jews and to expose our interesting history and customs to non-Jews. I became the Vice President of the Jewish Student Connection (JSC) club at school, joined my temple youth group and became involved in the programs at my temple including the Maimonides Youth Leadership Program and the Shabbat Around the World events.

Prejudice and intolerance are still a reality for the Jewish people. We still live in fear that what happened in 1939 can happen again. The only way to fight the plague of hate is to educate and expose people to the beautiful culture and customs of the Jewish people. It is story time. The Jews will do what they do best: talk. Everyone else need only listen.