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ST. LOUIS PARK, Minn. (KMSP) - Images of swastikas and burning torches after last week's rallies in Charlottesville are especially traumatizing for the small amount of people in Minnesota who lived through Nazi atrocities the first time around, many of whom say the current rise of hate groups is especially concerning.
Reva Kibort was born in Poland before WWII, the youngest of seven children. She came to America in 1947 after being liberated from a Nazi labor camp, along with four other siblings--who all eventually reconnected in Minnesota.
Recently, however, she's been thinking a lot about how history repeats itself, turning her sadness into anger when she sees things like white supremacist rallies and "Heil Trump" chants on the news.
“Tell these young people if they want to know about war, let them come and talk to me—if they want to know anything about wars so they don’t go march with the swastikas,” she said. “Everything comes back to me when I see those symbols—the swatiska—who would have ever thought that we would have seen those again.”
She raised her own children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren to believe that we are all the same, and after a lifetime of experience she says one thing is for certain:
Hate can only be taught.
“You can never, never forget, and you should never think that this cannot happen again," she said. "Just because we celebrate different holidays, or we look different or speak different—you just have to be tolerant.”