A lawyer from the Village of East Hills in Roslyn is using his wallet as a weapon to help ward off anti-Semitism in Nassau County.
Brad Gerstman, a co-founder of Gotham Government Relations & Communications and board member of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center in Glen Cove, has established a fund in which he will personally donate $1,000 for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of anyone who commits an anti-Semitic act in Nassau County.
“When looking at the worldwide picture of anti-Semitism, it looks like it’s growing in a lot of different areas of this country,” he said Monday. “In my own little corner of the world, I can see what I can do to stop it.”
A former prosecutor, Gerstman said he was motivated to start the fund after attending a conference at Hofstra University on Sunday that united living Holocaust survivors and their descendants.
He said he will work with the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center, Nassau County police and the Nassau County District Attorney’s office to identify people who commit anti-Semitic acts and hopes to attract other potential donors in the area.
“Maybe we can up that ante, and by doing that, I think we could help prevent a lot of crimes,” Gerstman said. “There’s a lot of money out there. Let’s see what else there is to do.”
But Gerstman said his primary goal to help curtail anti-Semitic acts is through educating the public about the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed across Europe under Nazi occupation.
“In our country, there’s a great deal of freedom, but those people who are naive or don’t understand others or don’t want to understand others will maybe take the history of Jews in Nazi Germany and say maybe it did not occur, and there will be more and more of that as time goes on. The survivors, there aren’t many of them who are still alive,” he said. “People are getting older and older.”
“Keep in mind,” he added, “Jews are a very small minority, not just in this country, but in the world. It’s very concerning. We have to look out for ourselves.”
Gotham Government Relations & Communications is a government relations firm with offices in Roslyn, Albany, New York City and Washington, D.C.
