The Significance of the Holocaust Today

Trigger Warning: Antisemitism, The Holocaust, Nazism

A few months ago, I was lucky enough to be offered a place by my school to take part in a scheme from the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) called Lessons from Auschwitz (LFA). This scheme gave me the privilege to attend seminars to learn about the Holocaust, hear the testimony of survivors and to go for a day trip to Poland, visiting the town of Oswiecim and the camps Auschwitz-I, and Auschwitz-II-Birkenau. The LFA scheme asks all its participants to take part in a follow up project to help communicate back to others what we learned from the scheme. This post will serve as both a recount of my experience with the scheme, what crucial lessons I took from it and how they apply to today.

The trip to Poland started with us going to the Town of Oswiecim, near the Auschwitz sites. This gave us an insight into Jewish life in Poland before the Holocaust. We visited the site of the Great Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the town. This building once had 1,000 people attending, had electric power, and would regularly host visiting Rabbis. Now the only thing that remains is a memorial written in Polish, English and Hebrew. We also visited the market square of the town which would be bustling with people. Before the holocaust every single property by the town square used to be Jewish owned until the Nazis removed property rights of Jewish people in 1938. There is very little mention of the Holocaust in the town square or how Jewish people were forcibly removed. 

We were told story of a Jewish man who survived that holocaust and came back to Oswiecim. He opened a small synagogue every day in case any Jewish people ever came back to the town. They never did, but the people of the town provided him with food and water, as he was too traumatised to do anything else, even speak. This town used to be 58% Jewish. Today, not a single Jewish person lives there. 

We then went to Auschwitz-I via a short coach ride. Something that struck me was how close to the modern infrastructure the site was, a juxtaposition that would become more pronounced after learning that the SS officers had a bar just outside the camp. We were brought by our tour guide through the metal gates with the words 'Arbeit Macht Frei' ('Work Sets You Free') on them and around the uniform brick buildings. Auschwitz-I contains some of the finds from Kanada. Kanada was where the Nazis took all the victim's belongings to be sorted through and redistributed to the German people. The finds include clothing, shoes, suitcases and human hair. We then went through a reconstruction of the gas chambers.

An important part in expanding my understanding of the Holocaust beyond statistics was seeing all the suitcases piled up. Each had a name written on; stamps, stickers and postcards stuck to them; and all sorts of wear and tear. Each suitcase belonged to a family who were promised a new a better life in the east. This demonstrates how each person had a life and experiences before arriving in Auschwitz, of which most records of did not survive. It also shows how deception was used by the Nazis to get the victims to comply and how it was vital to the smooth operation of the Holocaust. Even as the doors to the gas chamber closed people were told they were being disinfected before they could work and to enjoy bathing.

Walking up to the gates of Auschwitz-II-Birkenau is a sight few victims ever got to see. The trains that took them there had no windows and took them directly inside the camp. We saw where the prisoners slept and their toilet. These degrading structures were intentionally cramped with no privacy or dignity. We were told a story of a girl who survived Auschwitz by working in clearing out the toilets. This enabled her to talk to other people and learn how to survive as SS officers would not want to go down there because of the smell. We heard from the Rabbi who had come with us on the trip about how Jewish people maintained their faith during and after the Holocaust. He told us about how people would celebrate festivals by lighting bits of string and lace instead of candles and saying prayers. We were then showed the remains of the crematoria and gas chambers. 

After our tour through Auschwitz II we had a memorial service in which the Rabbi sang a prayer in Hebrew for all the victims of the Holocaust. It was incredibly moving for me as this is a defiant act which returns autonomy and control of the story to Jewish people.

Mark Twain said "History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes". When considering something as horrific as the Holocaust one of the greatest lessons we can take from it is how to prevent any other genocides from happening. We of cause know that history has rhymed since, with The Holocaust Museum's Holocaust Encyclopaedia listing two instances of genocide happening since the turn of the 21st century. The language of history 'rhyming', I feel, is useful as it manages to demonstrate how these events were all brought about by similar causes of hatred, but still manages to identify how suffering is experienced differently by those involved and doesn't draw attention away from the individual suffering of each group. Therefore, a deep understanding of the Holocaust is necessary for all people today.

A week after we had gone to Poland, we had our follow up seminar where we had a holocaust survivor, Stephen Frank, tell us his story. He was born in a secular Jewish family. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a musician. His father was on the Amsterdam Jewish Council and he reluctantly carried out Nazi orders. However, he resisted this by also joining the Dutch resistance where he organised the issue of false papers to enable people to escape. He was betrayed and arrested in 1942 and sent to Auschwitz-II- Birkenau where his poor physical health meant that he was gassed in January 1943. In March 1943 his family were taken to Barneveld and later in September they were sent to Westerbork. The following year they were sent to Terezin in Czechoslovakia where the whole family survived and was liberated by the red army on 9th May 1945. Stephen was a child when he was liberated and is now in his late 80s. Living memory of the Holocaust is dying out. It is vital it is we learn about and from the holocaust to prevent and address the instances where history rhymes.

The first step in a deeper understanding of the holocaust is to recognise that referring purely to statistics or using graphic imagery is degrading to the victims. Instead, we must hold together the statistics with survivor testimony. This allows us to do two things: first, to restore a voice to those who their persecutors attempted to silence, making it an act of defiance; and second it allows us to gain a better understanding of the human suffering to which the statistics point.

The HET defines the Holocaust as: "the murder of approximately six million Jewish men, women and children by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the Second World War." The Holocaust was facilitated by all sorts of people from all across society including the Nazi legislators criminalising Jewish existence through the Nuremburg Laws and other laws, the civil servants who carried out the policy, the people who built and ran the camps themselves, the train staff who took people to the camps, the allies who refused to bomb the railway tracks, and many others. Responsibility for the Holocaust does not belong solely with the architects of antisemitic ideology.

The Nazis came to power on the back of economic depression and a nationalist agenda. However, national pride and economic hardship does not become genocide overnight, so it is imperative that we use whatever tools we can to spot where discrimination happens and realise how it leads to genocide. An incredibly useful tool is the Pyramid of Hate, used by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The pyramid has five layers that describe the different stages of marginalisation groups of people experience. It starts with Biased Attitudes and goes through Acts of Bias, Discrimination, Bias Motivated Violence until its peak at Genocide.

Another part of learning from the Holocaust stems from recognising that the people who enabled it to happen were not inhuman monsters, they were real people with their own lives and stories; We can begin to understand how and why these people acted the way they did without condoning their actions. Understanding this allows us to realise that we too are not immune to hate entering our lives and might allow us to see where history may be rhyming today, and where certain groups may be moving through the pyramid of hate. Rehumanising all involved is a crucial step towards learning from the Holocaust and allowing us to recognise hatred in ourselves and in society as a whole.

The Holocaust is the event that truly demonstrates what is possible when hatred is not only unchecked, but given power and enabled. Primo Levi, another Holocaust survivor, said "it happened, therefore it can happen again". Holocaust denial and antisemitism is on the rise today, as can be seen with Kanye West's antisemitic tweets, the Labour Party's recent struggles with antisemitism, and rising alt-right communities online spouting hate and lies about the Holocaust not happening. It then follows that not only as educators and students of the Holocaust, but as human beings with a duty to each other, that we must oppose hatred at all levels in order to make genocide nothing more than a bad stain on human history.