Social media star Montana Tucker is known for posting fun videos of herself and others dancing, but her latest project strikes a much different chord.
The 29-year-old influencer has launched a series onTikTokandInstagramtitledHow To: Never Forget, which follows Tucker as she learns more about the Holocaust and her personal connection to the genocide during a trip to Poland.
Tucker tells PEOPLE that the 10-part series of short videos, which launched on Oct. 24, is aimed at educating viewers — especially her Gen-Z followers — about the history behind the Holocaust and its devastating impact on the Jewish community.
“I think the main goal was [to educate] Gen-Z, because that’s the generation that doesn’t know as much about it,” she says. “But I think it’s also going to, hopefully, change people’s perspectives as well.”
After a year of planning, Tucker and her team visited Poland earlier this year, where she visited locations such as Schindler’s Factory, Auschwitz and Bełżec. During her journey, Tucker learned that some of her relatives died at Bełżec.
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“It was absolutely the hardest week of my life — absolutely the hardest — but the most important,” Tucker tells PEOPLE.
The release ofHow To: Never Forgetcomes as antisemitism is on the rise. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the number of antisemitic incidents in the U.S.reached an all-time highin 2021, with an average of more than seven incidents per day.
Meanwhile, knowledge surrounding the Holocaust appears to be dwindling in the U.S. A Pew Research poll conducted in 2019 showed thatjust 45% of Americans knowthat 6 million Jewish people were killed during the Holocaust — including about two-thirds of teens ages 13 to 17. (The teens were likely born between 2002 and 2006.)
Additionally, only20 states requireschools to educate students about the Holocaust, four of which passed laws in 2021, according to the Jewish Virtual Library. Three other states — Alabama, Pennsylvania and Washington — recommend it.
Antisemitism has been also in the spotlight in recent weeks, as various public figures — including rapperKanye Westand NBA starKyrie Irving— sparked backlash for posting and expressing harmful rhetoric across various platforms and mediums.
Tucker says the timing of the series release is unrelated to recent news, but believes it is more important than ever to educate people about the Holocaust and the Jewish community.
“I’m like, ‘Well, if I can somehow be a slight bit of education for them, and they watch my videos already, they might actually listen to me.’ And that’s what’s most powerful,” she tells PEOPLE.
New episodes ofHow To: Never Forgetbegan dropping daily Tuesday on Tucker’s TikTok and Instagram pages, leading up to Nov. 9, which marks the anniversary ofKristallnacht, also known as the Night of the Broken Glass, when anti-Jewish violence broke out across Europe in 1938.
Ninety-one Jewish people were murdered and approximately 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses, homes, and schools were burglarized amid 48 hours of anti-Jewish demonstrations in Germany, Austria and and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Eventually, Tucker hopes to create a longer film from footage from her trip. “There are a lot of stories and people that I met in Poland that we didn’t put into this, but they were super important and crucial for people to know,” she tells PEOPLE.
But for now, Tucker hopes her current series will educate viewers, and perhaps help change some perspectives.
“This is definitely about what happened to the Jewish people in the Holocaust,” she tells PEOPLE, “but I also hope people takeaway that this is going on all over the world.”
source: people.com
