Over the course of 3 weeks, I was given the opportunity to complete an online course; Lessons from Auschwitz Online. I attended 3 webinars, and completed various modules, each provoking deep thought into the Holocaust. Within each, I considered: the definition of the Holocaust, got the opportunity to hear a wonderful woman named Janine Webber, give her testimony, got to view the arrival area, barracks, and entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum via virtual reality, whilst gaining many insights into the harsh and brutal reality of the Holocaust. The last module consisted of another testimony, that of Kitty Hart-Moxon, and within the last session, I engaged in a commemoration alongside Rabbi Shaw, and heard some words spoken in remembrance of those who were murdered during the Holocaust.
The Holocaust is defined as the murder of 6 million Jewish men, women, and children, by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the Second World War. However, by thinking of the Holocaust in statistical terms, one can fall into the trap of thinking of the Jewish people murdered as a faceless, nameless, homogeneous group with little relation to our own human experience. As such, we unfortunately tend to forget that each victim was an individual that had a name, identity, and a story. Without understanding who these people were, it is impossible to truly be able to realise and understand the impact of the Holocaust, and the loss and void of what was left after it. Thus, the importance of humanising the Holocaust, and always coming back the individual stories is extremely important, as it helps us to understand the reality of the events in a more intimate manner.
The fact that so many victims did not even consider being Jewish as a defining part of their identity, was eye-opening. For example, Berta Rosenheim, an only child who lived with her parents, was born in Leipzig. Her father, Walter, was a self-employed salesman, and her mother was a housewife. Her mother enjoyed going to the theatre, and Berta often accompanied her. A picture of Berta was shown on her first day of school; she was holding a school cone, something which originated in Germany in 1810; cones were stuffed with stationery, sweets, and even stuffed animals, to share with others, and to help make children comfortable on their first day. Berta’s family didn’t observe Sabbath, and her father, in fact, worked on Saturdays. Her family didn’t speak Hebrew, and they didn’t attend the Synagogue; being Jewish wasn’t a definitive part of her identity, she stated that her Germanness was more important to her than her Jewishness. Berta was eventually forced to leave the German state school she attended due to the onslaught of the war, and was forced to join the Jewish school, which she previously stated she wanted nothing to do with. She was sent to England as part of the Kindertransport, but her parents were murdered in Germany. The truth is, we do not have one characteristic which defines us; be it our race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexuality - whole people, human beings are not defined by one singular quality or trait. The same way, the victims of the Holocaust were not only Jewish, but they were also mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, bankers, shoemakers, industrialists, farmers, business-owners; human beings, like the rest of us.
There were multiple ideas which I was struck by, particularly the difference between extermination and concentration camps; extermination camps were made with the intent to kill, whilst concentration camps were generally created for incessant slave labour. Nazi Germany used six extermination camps, also called death camps, or killing centres, within Central Europe during WW2, to systematically murder over 2.7 million people, a colossal majority being Jewish victims. The six camps were: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek death camps also used extreme work under starvation conditions to kill their prisoners. I was given the opportunity to see key areas of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, and it was truly an eye-opening experience. Out of the 1.3 million sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1.1 million were murdered there, and approximately 960,000 of these Jews were from all over Europe’s Nazi occupied territories, and in addition, 74,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma or Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and 15,000 various others across Europe, would perish at Auschwitz. What is important to mention is that I cite these statistics to give an idea of the sheer size of those impacted, however, as aforementioned, statistics can often become impersonal and incomprehensible, unless we go back to individual stories.
Hearing the struggles, and sacrifices; the unimaginable situations prisoners and victims were subjected to was truly horrific, and it made me consider my own problems from a completely different perspective. As Kitty Hart-Moxon put it: “it isn’t a question of remembering it [the Holocaust], but a question of learning from it. Those who have no graves need to be remembered as individual people.” The Book of Names reminds us that every victim was an individual, and that as well as the vast numbers and statistics related to the Holocaust, we should also always return to the individual lives that were lost.
As Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “history doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes”; it is now our responsibility that we help to raise awareness, have productive discussions, and educate ourselves on the atrocities of the Holocaust, but also the atrocities which take place today: hate crimes, Antisemitism, and Holocaust denial. We are indebted to the survivors who lived to tell their testimonies and experiences, educating us; ergo, we must become a part of the legacy, and educate those around us as well.
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