When CNN political commentator Van Jones got up to accept the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation’s fighting hatred award at the nonprofit’s 25th anniversary gala, he hadn’t planned to go off script or to tear up.
“It’s not just the firebombs and the hunting of Jewish people in the streets of America right now,” Jones told an audience of more than 600 at Wednesday’s event at Pier Sixty in Manhattan.
“It’s the appalling silence from people who know better and won’t say better,” he said, his voice breaking.
Jones was awarded for strengthening ties between black and Jewish communities, notably by founding the Exodus Leadership Forum, which seeks to rebuild the Civil Rights-era alliance.
In January, Jones led a delegation of black leaders and others to Poland, in partnership with the foundation and with the Exodus Leadership Forum, on a trip marking 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz.
“It was a small number of black folks, who held onto the cultural DNA of ‘justice for all,’” Jones said. “It was a small number of Jews, who held onto the cultural DNA of ‘repair the world.’”
“When you put those two bits of cultural DNA together, you get a double helix of hope for humanity,” he added.
Brianne Bergson-Gluckstern, who directed the gala, told JNS that this year’s annual event was particularly important for its focus on the black-Jewish alliance.
“We’re highlighting unity across communities,” Gluckstern said. “Especially with everything that’s happening in the world, it’s powerful to show that there are good people who care and want to create harmony.”
More than three dozen graduates of the foundation’s American Service Academies Program—a 16-day Holocaust education program in the United States and Poland for select cadets and midshipmen from the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Space Force academies—attended the event.
Dressed in full uniform, the cadets were honored with several rounds of applause throughout the night. Most were non-Jewish and came from rural areas.
Tyler Bissett, a Utah resident and senior cadet at the U.S Coast Guard Military Academy, told JNS that the majority of what he learned during his recent trip to Poland as part of the program was “completely new to him.”
“Back in Utah, the Holocaust isn’t super emphasized in schools,” Bisset told JNS. “Maybe we covered it for a day in middle school, but going on this trip really opened my eyes to the stories behind the artifacts and the people who lived through such a horrific tragedy.”
Jack Simony, director general of the foundation, announced at the dinner that there are plans to collaborate with historically black colleges and universities to build something like the American Service Academies Program for future black leaders.
“The goal is to take young Jewish leaders and young black leaders and spend time together in New York and in Poland to understand each other’s histories,” Simony told JNS after his speech.
“We want them to learn what we’ve come from, what we’ve overcome, how we’ve worked together and how we can continue to fight hate together,” he said.
Simony said that the program’s next phase, in partnership with Project Exodus and Jones, will bring the leaders to Ghana to visit the Door of No Return, a site where African slaves were forced onto ships for the transatlantic slave trade.
“What happened during the Holocaust to the Jews was genocide, completely beyond words,” Simony told JNS. “For the black community, their experiences throughout slavery, persecution and oppression have been extremely devastating as well.”
“It wasn’t just abduction, rape and murder,” he added. “They had their heritage and identity stolen. Centuries of slavery erased their history and their sense of self.”
‘Rebuilding, reimagining’
Raymond Leon Roker, co-founder of the Exodus Leadership Forum and organizer of the recent foundation delegation to Poland, told JNS that the black and Jewish communities have a more than 100-year-old history of collaboration.
“Time and again, when these two communities came together, it resulted in breakthroughs for American democracy,” Roker said. “We believe the next breakthrough, especially at this difficult time in our country, will come, at least in part, through a rebuilding and reimagining of that black-Jewish alliance.”
Roker told JNS that the Poland delegation included several black, non-Jewish leaders, many of whom were also honored with a medal of valor at the gala, including Philadelphia pastor Carl Day, entrepreneur and CEO of Operation HOPE John Hope Bryant and his wife Chaitra and singer-activists Victory Boyd and Malynda Hale.
“I’m black and Jewish, so I sort of landed right in the middle,” Roker told JNS with a smile.
Donor cards afforded attendees the chance to support the foundation at various levels, including its educational center in Oświęcim, Poland, which provides Holocaust education and anti-hate training to high school students before and after their visits to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
They could also support the upkeep of the last surviving synagogue near the camps and Oświęcim’s Jewish cemetery. More than 50 Holocaust survivors attended the event, many of whom are Auschwitz survivors.
Elizaveta Vigonskaia, who was two years old when the Nazis invaded her home of Kyiv, Ukraine, told JNS that the task of survivors “is to share our life experiences with the new generation, so they know what we went through.”
“This new generation—they are the ones who will take care of the future and they are the ones who will say, ‘never again’,” Vigonskaia said. “That is what I do.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who is running to retain his seat as an independent, made a brief appearance at the cocktail hour to speak to guests about the importance of Holocaust education and to reaffirm his commitment to strengthening the black and Jewish communities relationship.
“It is time for us to engage in real dialogue and tell the truth,” he said. “If you match the education being taught with the radicalization of our children in prestigious institutions across the country, it’s clear that this conversation must happen.”
“I saw the Nazi camps and I saw what hate produces over and over again,” he said. “So I stand shoulder to shoulder with you, as we continue to lift up this knowledge and ensure that ‘never again’ is not just a slogan, but a lived reality.”
Simony, the foundation’s director general, told JNS that the decision to honor Jones was “an easy one.”
“He traveled with us to Poland, stood with us at Auschwitz and spent two weeks in Israel,” he said. “He’s shown moral courage and strength. Honestly, I think he’s a hero.”
The event also honored the international law firm Reed Smith, headquartered in Pittsburgh, with an advocacy award for defending Jewish university students who need representation.
Casey Ryan, the firm’s global managing partner and executive committee chair who accepted the award on its behalf, told JNS that many of its lawyers have traveled to Oświęcim in partnership with the foundation.
“It’s a tremendous organization whose mission to eradicate hate is something we deeply believe in,” Ryan said. “We’re proud to lend our lawyers and our legal expertise to help advance that mission.”
Rick and Mary Fox-Frasier, founders of the Miracle Ear Foundation, a nonprofit that provides hearing aids to those who need them, also received humanitarian awards. Their foundation provided hearing aids to more than 100 Holocaust survivors in 2024, in partnership with the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation.
The evening concluded with a joint prayer for the hostages in Gaza, followed by a performance of “Song for Peace” by Boyd, who received a medal of valor.
Jones was the night’s final speaker. He told attendees that Jews supported the Civil Rights movement “just an inch out of the horrors of the Holocaust.”
“Can you imagine that? Being an inch out of the horrors of the Holocaust and then seeing your children get in buses and go down south to help somebody,” he said.
“What a people,” he said, shaking his head. “What a people.”