Dallas Holocaust Museum hosts forum to discuss synagogue shooting

The Dallas Holocaust Museum has an ongoing series that tackles the tough issues facing members of the Jewish faith and society.

On Monday night, they addressed the Pittsburgh shooting and all of the hate and anger that comes with it.

The event was put together by the Dallas Holocaust Museum and the Center for Education and Tolerance. It’s part of a series of forums encouraging civil discourse.

Monday’s topic was scheduled to be on freedom of speech on college campuses featuring a panel of three presidents of three local universities: the University of Dallas, the University of North Texas and Texas Woman’s University. But the mass murder of Jewish Americans at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and the murders of two African Americans at a grocery store in Kentucky framed the discussion.

“This past week has been a tragic indicator of what can happen when we get angrier and angrier and can no longer thoughtfully debate the issues,” said Jim Tolbert, a museum board member. “When the pressure cooker of rhetoric blows, we get pipe bombs sent to public figures and mass murder at a synagogue.”

“This event was scheduled before the massacre this weekend. But we do think it’s important that we’re following on that because it’s important that we remember that we can come together and have a civil conversation,” said Mary Pat Higgins, president and CEO of the Dallas Holocaust Museum. “We hope we can encourage people to come together and listen to different points of view without being angry.”

Among those in attendance were two Holocaust survivors.

90-year-old Max Glauben was taken from the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw as a teenager and survived several Nazi concentration camps before being liberated from Flossenbürg

93-year-old Jack Repp was also taken as a teenager. He was later liberated from Dachau, Germany, by U.S. forces in 1945.

The Dallas Holocaust Museum organizes three forums each year encouraging civil discourse and tolerance.

The next is scheduled for some time in March.