Rene Lichtman, born 1937, is a “hidden child” Holocaust survivor who opposes the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, then pro Palestine Columbia graduate students Layla Saliba and Aidan.

• 00:00 Intro
• 02:55 Rene and his family’s history with the Holocaust
• 09:46 Rene’s history with Zionism and Israel
• 17:12 Why Rene’s family kept his story a secret
• 25:16 Rene’s ‘Aha’ moment on Israel and Zionism

Rene Lichtman, a Holocaust survivor and hidden child accuses Israel of genocide and draws parallels between the Israeli army and the Nazis: “I see it as genocide. it’s difficult for me to say that, but it’s equivalent to what happened in the Holocaust.”

The son of two Polish Jews who fled to France during the 1930s, Rene was hidden at the age of two with a Catholic family outside of Paris after his father was killed during the 1940 Nazi invasion and his mother was forced into hiding. After the war, Rene moved with his mother to Brooklyn, New York. He was politically radicalized in the 1960s and became an active opponent of the Vietnam War. Rene was a founding member of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust. On December 22, 2023, Rene took part in a demonstration outside of the Zekelman Holocaust Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan, against the US-backed Israeli massacres in Gaza.