As fewer Holocaust survivors remain, their accounts of the horrors they endured at Auschwitz are more crucial than ever. This year's commemoration at Auschwitz, marked by a ban on political speeches, prioritizes the voices of survivors and the memory of those they lost. The article highlights the enduring relevance of Holocaust remembrance in the face of rising antisemitism and the danger of dehumanization.
emory is fragile. A decade ago, 300 survivors gathered at Auschwitz to commemorate the Nazi death camp’s liberation. On Monday, 50she made to her dying sister Fanny, whose last wish was that she “tell what happened to us ... so that we are not forgotten by history.” Almost 1 million of the 6 million Jews murdered in thewere killed at the complex in German-occupied Poland, along with smaller numbers of Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, gay men, political prisoners and others.
The Auschwitz museum’s decision to ban speeches by politicians this year may be in part pragmatic. Holocaust memory has too oftenin Poland. The museum’s mission stands above politics, yet cannot be wholly insulated from global affairs. Vladimir Putin has attended in the past, but there will be no Russian presence this time.
Antisemitism and other forms of bigotry never vanished. Now they flourish. True believers are emboldened; others go along with them from ambition or indifference. “Functionaries”, suggested– another survivor of the death camp – are more numerous and therefore more dangerous than monsters. Dehumanisation rarely leads to genocide, but all genocides begin with dehumanisation.
HOLOCAUST AUSCHWITZ SURVIVORS ANTISEMITISM GENOCIDE
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