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HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

“Father time” is undefeated. That is a well-known expression often applied to sports careers, but it is also applicable to other aspects of life, such as Holocaust survivors.

It has been 80 years since the end of WWII and the resultant worldwide revelation of the Holocaust that the Nazis visited upon Jews, Gypsies, and others they deemed to be “enemies of the state, inferior” and even “subhuman,” from the early 1930s through 1945. It is estimated that the Nazis and their often-eager collaborators murdered some six million Jews during this period. (Yes, there are credible records of many who risked their lives to save Jews, but in my opinion, they were in the minority.) The overall total, including, non-Jews, is unknown due to the many mass executions whose victims were buried in hidden and unrecorded mass graves, but according to Wikipedia, research by historians places the number of Holocaust victims murdered at “not less than twelve million and probably more.”

The contrast between the estimated Jewish populations of some European countries prewar versus postwar is shocking but not surprising: Germany – 560,000 vs. 15,000, Poland – 3.3 million vs. 300,000, and Austria – 191,000 vs fewer than 4,000. Jews had been living in those countries for hundreds of years. They had become ingrained into the economic, political, social and cultural life of those countries. They were always welcome, until they were not.

It has often been said that the surviving victims’ best revenge on Hitler and the Nazis was to live a long, productive life. As the Tom Hanks character counseled the Matt Damon character in the iconic WWII movie Saving Private Ryan: “earn it.”

Inevitably, with the passage of time the number of Holocaust survivors has dwindled down to a precious few. According to a recent article published in the Associated Press only some 200,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors are still alive, roughly one-half of whom live in Israel. (By comparison, Israel is home to merely .12% of the world’s total population.)

The Claims Conference, which monitors Holocaust survivors, estimates their median age to be 87 with about 1,500 of them in excess of 100 years old. As one might expect a goodly number of them are in poor general health, not only the result of age but also the physical, mental and emotional abuse and stress of the Holocaust, itself. According to research provided by Vanishing Witnesses sadly, but inevitably, due to normal mortality rates approximately 50% of them will likely pass away in the next six years, and virtually all of them within the next 15.

One survivor who has fulfilled the aforementioned advice to “live long and well” is Albrecht W. As profiled in the aforementioned AP article AW is 100. He survived Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Mittel Brau-Dora and three “death” marches. Virtually his entire extended family was murdered in the Holocaust. To this day, he is still haunted by “horrendous memories” of what he endured. “I sleep with it; I sweat; I have nightmares; that is my [remembrance].” He dedicated his working career to teaching high school students and others about what he and others endured. Nevertheless, he is one of those who worries who will keep the memories alive after he is gone.

Conclusion

The primary takeaway from the foregoing is that very soon there will no longer be any firsthand witnesses to the horrific events that took place. Yes, there are photos, films and secondhand accounts, but they do not have the same impact. “Holocaust deniers” are already asserting that the events of the Holocaust are either exaggerated or never occurred. Ironically, they are simply too horrific and inhuman to be believed. Normal people cannot conceive that a human being could do those things to another human.

As time moves on, these “deniers” will become more numerous and vociferous. They will claim that photos and film records have been photoshopped and “doctored” and any remaining witnesses are unreliable. Eventually, the memories survivors have vowed to ensure people will “never forget” will, in fact, be forgotten, and the world will be inching closer to the next Holocaust. I hope I am wrong about this but based on history I doubt it.

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AUSCHVITZ REMEMBRANCE DAY – POIGANCE AND A FEEL-GOOD STORY

Yesterday, January 27 was the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. During WWII the Nazis created and operated five concentration camps specifically designed to murder Jews and other “undesirables,” such as Soviet POWs, ethnic Poles, homosexuals, Romani (gypsies), and persons with disabilities. The other concentration camps were Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Auschwitz was, perhaps, the most notorious of them all. Approximately 2.7 million Jews were murdered at the above-mentioned camps (out of the overall total of six million). Of that total Auschwitz accounted for the most, approximately one million.

In addition to the mass murders at these camps some two million Jews were murdered in indiscriminate mass shootings. Most of these people were buried in mass graves. Other methods of extermination included murders in ghettos, labor camps, deliberate privation (of food, water, shelter and medical treatment), disease, brutality, antisemitic riots, and arbitrary acts  

The Nazis spent many years and much time and resources to develop the most efficient method of murdering these people before they settled on using gas chambers in these camps. Their goal was complete extermination. Most historians denote that this fixation came at a huge cost to their war effort and likely contributed their ultimate defeat.

These death camps were horrible beyond description, but occasionally we hear of a “feelgood” story. For instance, recently, I came across such a story in the NY Post about two sisters who were imprisoned at Auschwitz as very young girls, miraculously survived and eventually were reunited as adults. The older one, Eva Sbornik, was born in a labor camp and sent to Auschwitz as a toddler. Normally, the Nazis murdered toddlers upon arrival. However, her train was delayed and consequently arrived after the camp guards had destroyed the crematoriums in a vain attempt to hide the evidence of their crimes from the rapidly advancing Allied forces. As a result, she was spared.

The younger sister, Elenora Umlauf, was actually born in Auschwitz’s infirmary on April 30, 1945 after the camp had been liberated. Almost certainly if the camp had still been run by the Nazis she would have perished. Even so, she was very sickly and the Red Cross doctors who treated her doubted she would survive, but she did.

Thus, both sisters survived, but for many years neither one was aware of the other’s existence. Ultimately, they were reunited along with their mother.

Incredibly, both are still alive today. Each one has attained the ultimate revenge on the Nazis, which is to survive and live a long and successful life. Both live in Germany. Sbornik is a doctor specializing in internal medicine, and Umlauf is a pediatrician and psychotherapist.

Both related their remarkable story in an interview with the NY Post in conjunction with the aforementioned 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Sbornik took the occasion to tell the world to remember the Holocaust.

Sometimes, luck and happenstance decide who lives and who dies. For example, one survivor, 92, was the beneficiary of such luck. He was nine years old and living with his family in Greece when the Nazis arrived. When they began arresting Jews in the area his family fled. “We were hiding in the mountains in a monastery, but we stayed together,” he remembered. One time, “[a Nazi soldier] took a shot at me, but thank God I had already turned the corner and didn’t get shot. However, another child that was crossing the street at that time took the bullet that was meant for me,”

There were many other similar stories told by other survivors, stories of bravery and fortune. These stories should not be forgotten.

Attendees at Monday’s commemoration in Oswiecim, Poland included several World leaders, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Britain’s King Charles III and French President Emmanuel Macron, among others, and dozens of Holocaust survivors. The U.S. delegation included Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, who played a key role in negotiating this month’s Gaza truce agreement between Israel and Hamas, Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Commerce, and Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump’s choice as ambassador to France. Due to the advanced age and ill health of many of the survivors this year’s ceremony is regarded as perhaps the last major observance of Auschwitz’s liberation that any notable number of survivors will be able to attend.

Various Polish and German officials gave speeches that said all the right things.

For example, prior to the ceremony, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda remembered the victims of the camp in a television address, saying his country has a special role in preserving the memory of Auschwitz. He stated, “We Poles, on whose land occupied by Nazi Germany the Germans built this extermination industry and concentration camp are today the guardians of memory.” At the ceremony on the former grounds of Auschwitz, Duda, accompanied by a group of survivors, laid a wreath at the so-called “Death Wall,” where many shooting executions took place. Some of the survivors wore blue-and-white striped scarves, the colors of the prisoner uniforms they were forced to wear at the camp.

In addition, in several interviews with German media, Scholz stated that it was “depressing how many people in Germany hardly know anything about the Holocaust.” Each state in Germany has control over how the Holocaust is taught in schools, and instruction is inconsistent.

Conclusion

A day after the political rally, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk posted on X that calls at the rally to forget “German guilt for Nazi[s’] crimes” sounded all too familiar and ominous, especially given the setting. Moreover, in an appearance on Germany’s public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk, Abraham Lehrer, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said of the horrors Nazi Germany perpetuated at Auschwitz: “We must not allow commemoration to be ‘enough.’ “

According to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which represents the world’s Jews in negotiating for compensation and restitution there are only about 1,000 Auschwitz survivors still living. As time has gone by and the survivors dwindle people have begun to forget and some are even beginning to deny it ever happened.

In my opinion that is unacceptable. It greatly increases the likelihood for a recurrence. Already we are seeing a dangerous rise in antisemitism. We must keep the memory alive and never forget!

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