World Observes 80th Anniversary of Liberation of Auschwitz on Holocaust Remembrance Day
Ruth Winkelmann’s childhood ended at age 10.
It was on the day in 1938 when the Nazi madness against the Jewish community turned violent on what would be known forever after as “Kristallnacht,” the night of broken glass. Her father embraced her and said, “This is the beginning of a very difficult time, and we’ll try to live through it.”
Ruth did live through it, witnessing the destruction and chaos of that night of horror from her home in Germany, then surviving the Holocaust as a teenager, living in a wooden shed on the outskirts of Berlin with no heat, running water or electricity. Her father died in Auschwitz, the death camp whose liberation the world observes this January 27.
“We couldn’t prevent it back then. But you can do it today.”
This year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day marks 80 years since the survivors of Auschwitz were freed, and Ruth, now 97, is one of an estimated 245,000 survivors who are still with us. Of those survivors, the vast majority—96%—were born after 1928. In other words, the remnants of those who suffered and survived are children who knew only a world that hated them and wanted them killed, whose births were a kind of death sentence. Like Ruth Winkelmann, their childhood memories are of terror, desperation and mass murder. They lost their families and their communities, and escaped with nothing but a story too horrible to tell, yet one that must be told.
Each Holocaust Remembrance Day, the story is told again, but the living voices are growing faint, and the world, ever reluctant to listen, refuses to learn the lesson that death is the inevitable outcome of hatred unchecked.
Evidence: A 2020 survey published by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany revealed that 63% of Americans of the Gen Z and millennial generations don’t know that 6 million Jews were murdered. Thirty-six percent thought that two million or fewer Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and although there were more than 40,000 camps and ghettos in Europe during the Holocaust, 48% couldn’t name a single one. An additional finding characterized by Conference president Gideon Taylor as “shocking and saddening” was that nearly 20% of Gen Z’s and millennials in New York believe the Jews caused the Holocaust.
More evidence: An Anti-Defamation League survey published this January 14 revealed that 46% of the world’s adult population—some 2.2 billion people—harbor “deeply entrenched antisemitic attitudes.” That’s more than twice the figure from a decade ago and the highest level on record since ADL began tracking these global trends.
The United Nations, founded post-World War II to ensure that the atrocities of that war and the Holocaust never happen again, has chosen this milestone year’s theme as “Holocaust remembrance and education for dignity and human rights.”
In keeping with that theme, the UN will devote the first four months of this year to a scheduled education program that includes exhibitions, discussions and testimonies by survivors.
According to a statement on the UN’s website, “The Holocaust shows what happens when hatred, dehumanization and apathy win. Its remembrance is a bulwark against the denigration of humanity, and a clarion call for collective action to ensure respect for dignity and human rights, and the international law that protects both.”
For decades, Ruth Winkelmann spoke to no one—not even her husband—about her lost childhood and teen years during the Holocaust. Then, one day in the 1990s, a woman noticed Ruth’s Star of David pendant and asked if she was a survivor and if she would please speak to her daughter’s class about it. Ruth agreed and, since then, has made it her mission to speak the unspeakable so that others may confront the unconfrontable. At 97, she continues to speak at schools across Germany.
On January 20, at a World Jewish Congress event in Berlin, Ruth told students: “When the Nazis came to power, we were young people, some of us children. We couldn’t prevent it back then. But you can do it today.”
Each remaining Holocaust survivor is a living wake-up call to the rest of us.
Someday soon, they will all be gone. And then, who will remain to bear witness?
Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel gave us the answer: “I believe firmly and profoundly that anyone who listens to a Witness becomes a Witness, so those who hear us, those who read us must continue to bear witness for us. Until now, they’re doing it with us. At a certain point in time, they will do it for all of us.”
