OSWIECIM, Poland — A decade ago, 1,500 Holocaust survivors traveled to Auschwitz to mark the 60th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation. On Tuesday, for the 70th anniversary, organizers are expecting 300, the youngest in their 70s.
“In 10 years, there might be just one,” said Zygmunt Shipper, an 85-year-old survivor who will attend the event in southern Poland to pay homage to the millions killed by the Third Reich. In recent years, Shipper has been traveling around Britain to share his story with school groups, hoping to reach as many people as he can while he has the strength.
“The children cry, and I tell them to talk to their parents and brothers and sisters and ask them ‘why do we do it and why do we hate?’ ” he said. “We mustn’t forget what happened.”
But as the world moves inevitably closer to a post-survivor era, some Jewish leaders fear that people are starting to forget. And they warn that the anti-Semitic hatred and violence that are on the rise, particularly in Europe, could partly be linked to fading memories of the Holocaust.
Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, said recent massacres in Paris, which targeted Jews and newspaper satirists, are proof of growing hatred and extremism. It’s a message he plans to stress in a speech Tuesday at the former site of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the Nazis killed more than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews.
“Shortly after World War II, after we saw the reality of Auschwitz and the other death camps, no normal person wanted to be associated with the anti-Semitism of the Nazis,” Lauder said. “But as the Holocaust grows more distant and survivors disappear, extremists grow more bold in targeting Jews. Stoked by a false narrative that blames Israel for a litany of the world’s problems, anti-Semitism is resurgent and deadly.”
Distance from the Holocaust is only one factor behind the rising anti-Semitism, and experts also fault the ease with which hateful propaganda is spread on the Internet and the growing presence of radical Islam in Europe. In Hungary and Greece, far-right movements have grown stronger amid economic decline.
“Fading memories are one reason for the rise in anti-Semitism, but anti-Semitism was always there,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League and a survivor himself. “We have hidden it, made it unacceptable, made it un-PC, but we never really eliminated it. The consciousness of what anti-Semitism was, of Auschwitz, was prevalent; it kept the lid on it. It wasn’t acceptable to be anti-Semitic.”
Despite the troubling trend, there are also reasons for hope. Mainstream society has become more vigilant, and Holocaust educators say that interest in the Holocaust keeps growing. Also, anti-Semitism remains a huge taboo for most politicians and mainstream societies in the West. Political opposition to anti-Semitism will be underlined by the presence Tuesday of the presidents of Germany, France and Poland, along with many other European leaders and royalty.
But condemnation of anti-Semitism hasn’t stopped it from growing in Muslim immigrant communities in Germany. Since the Gaza war last summer, there has been an increase in attacks against Israelis, synagogues and Jewish institutions. In Paris last summer, anti-Israel protests turned violent, and anti-Jewish fury was on display in Belgium and Italy.
One troubling question: Could anti-Semitism grow even more in coming years, when schoolchildren will no longer be able to have the life-altering experience of learning about the Holocaust directly from someone who was ripped away from a mother, who endured indescribable hunger, cold and torture, who witnessed chimneys spew out the smoke of burning bodies?
