A Holocaust survivor led a Los Angeles protest in front of meat-processing plant where some 1.5 million pigs are slaughtered annually, in a move he says was influenced by his experiences in the Warsaw ghetto.
Alex Hershaft, founder of Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), traveled to California from his Washington D.C.-area home to mark Tuesday’s World Farm Animal Day in a demonstration in which two people were arrested.
“As a Nazi Holocaust survivor, I am honor-bound to call public attention to this ongoing tragedy,” he said. “Indeed, my 37-year struggle to end the use of animals for food has been inspired largely by my experience of the Nazi Holocaust in Poland.”
“Obviously, I am not equating the millions of my fellow Jews slain tragically in the 1940s and the millions of pigs slaughtered every week for U.S. dinner tables, for we differ in many ways. Yet, we all share a love of life and our ability to experience many emotions, including affection, joy, sadness, and fear.
He says he draws inspiration from Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer: “For the animals, [life] is an eternal Treblinka.”