Holocaust survivor says she's sickened by what happened in Virginia

NEW ORLEANS, LA (WVUE) - A Holocaust survivor says she's sickened by what she saw in Charlottesville, VA.

"You know how they say history repeats itself? And it's repeating itself, and it's repeating itself on our soil," said Holocaust survivor Anne Levy.

Levy says what happened in Virginia is a painful reminder of what she lived through.

"I lived the first eight years of my life in hiding, and because there you go again, because why? Because Hitler decided I look like a Jew looks," said Levy. "It was Hell on Earth."

At 82, she says what she witnessed in the Warsaw Ghetto will never leave her.

"You would have hoped that after so many millions of people dying, that we wouldn't have that - especially here in the states," said Levy.

But, over the weekend, as White Nationalists, the KKK and Neo-Nazis protested the removal of a Confederate-era monument, a 20-year-old man drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman.

"It was a sickening feeling to see the clashes between people, to see the swastikas, and the KKK. I call them monsters out there," said Levy. "Young people, they don't know what it was all about truly. I mean, the guy that killed that girl, that ran into all those people, 20-years-old, where has he learned all that hatred?"

Now, she says all she can do is speak up, and she hopes others will, too.

"The message is we have to speak up and be aware of what's around us and speak up when we see evil, when we see people doing wrong, saying the wrong things," said Levy. "The Holocaust survivors are disappearing, and the soldiers that fought for these freedoms, we're all going away. We're in our 80s, 90s. It's not long for us, so who is going to fight this? Is history going to be rewritten?"

Levy says at first she wasn't going to do an interview with us, but she changed her mind because she feels it is so important to speak up and to share her story. She wants Americans of all religions to come together to fight hate. And, she says we have to teach our children what happened during Hitler's reign - and that it can happen again.

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