CONFRONTING HOLOCAUST AMNESIA

It is that time of the year again, wedged between International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, the Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 8, and the gradual liberation of Europe, culminating in the Nazi surrender on May 8, 1945, to remember the horrors permeating Europe during World War II, 76 plus years ago. At a time when 23% of 18-39 year old Americans believe that the Holocaust was a myth, 11% believe the Jews caused it, and 12% said they never heard of the Holocaust, as very few survivors are still around to testify, it seems imperative that we should strive to preserve the recollection of its horrific past. (Claims Conference, Feb. 9, 2021). Every year I make a point of re-reading my family's history. I was born in January of 1945 in the Netherlands. I never directly experienced the atrocities my fellow countrymen endured during five years of Nazi occupation. However, my formative years were consumed by accounts of first-hand encounters, unimaginable suffering, and intense hatred of Nazis. Pre school conversations were mostly initiated by my mother, who expressed very distinct opinions of her experiences during the occupation. My father never talked about them, even though his father, my grandfather, ended up in a concentration camp from which he never returned. My dad managed to internalize his emotions until late in life, when he committed his recollections to paper in the form of short narratives compiled in a series of small booklets. Those stories, amplified by research from one of my nephews, painted a picture of some of what my family went through during those fateful years. The very first story my father published set the tone, and offered a window into his frame of mind in June of 1942. I spent some time translating this story - some of what follows is paraphrased: A VERY SAD DAY "That morning, when I arrived at the time clock at the factory in Vaassen, I noticed that it was a quarter till eight. I was 15 minutes late. I was scheduled to start work at 7:30. However, the roads were iced over and terribly slick. I was forced to walk my bicycle for most of the eight kilometers from home. Those days, as soon as the start time arrived, the receptionist collected the time cards of those still absent, and took them to his office adjacent to the employee entrance. That morning was the first time my time card had disappeared. I had never been late to work. I had no choice but to retrieve my card, because if it did not show a clocking, you would not be paid. When I requested it, he said: "Sure, you can have it. I added 2 entries. You will now get paid from 8 a.m., plus you will be docked a quarter penalty because you are late." After some explanations, he forgave the penalty, but docked my pay by a quarter, for which I would have to work an extra hour. But that was the situation during those days. You had nothing to say. I made 12 gulden per week. That evening, when I went home and arrived at my parents' house, I entered the kitchen as I always did. The first thing I noticed was that my mother was not in the kitchen where I usually found her. The stove was not even lit. My mother lived by the clock. She served dinner every evening exactly at 6pm. You could not imagine how she managed that every day, and feed a family with seven children. Food was very scarce, and coal hardly available. She gathered wood from the forest to fuel the stove. Hesitantly, I crossed the kitchen and entered the living room. The picture that unfolded before my eyes has never been erased from my memory. In one corner the children were huddled, quietly staring somberly ahead. In the another corner sat my mother, at the table, crying. Confused, I sat across from her and stammered: "What's going on here?" Haltingly, she said: "The Germans picked up your dad. It's not just that he is gone - but how are we going to survive financially? The few pennies we have left will be gone in no time." I had never seen my mother cry. It cut straight through my soul. I tried to calm her down, but she exclaimed: "I will never see your dad again!" She dried her tears and mumbled "I totally forgot to cook." Half an hour later, the entire family sat at the table. My mother just stared ahead. She did not eat." My grandmother was right. She never saw her husband again, and my father never really found out what exactly happened to him. My grandfather was a butcher and inn keeper. During the war he occasionally supported the underground by hiding Jews as well as gentiles. Even though the Germans never found incriminating evidence at his house, they arrested him anyway on trumped up charges, and convicted him to 2.5 years of prison time. My nephew traced his whereabouts since his incarceration in 1942. Although his sentence officially ended on February 16, 1945, the Germans apparently considered it to be too risky to release prisoners while their country was being attacked from all sides. Instead of letting him go, they transported him to the Gestapo-led re-education camp "Lahde." "Lahde" was notorious for systemically killing its prisoners. The text at the entrance to the camp read: "Hier wird jeder Wille gebrochen." (Here every will is broken). The assembly area in front of the barracks featured two scaffolds where prisoners were regularly and publicly executed. Whippings were a daily occurrence. Every week the Nazis killed an estimated seventy prisoners. If you ended up being sick, not unusual after routinely being forced to do back-breaking work, you received one hundred lashes, which most prisoners did not survive. Less than one month after arriving at this facility my grandfather ended up on the gallows. He was murdered on March 11, less than two months before the end of the war. With the growing threat of extreme-right political parties throughout many parts of the world, white supremacy movements flourishing, and the glorification of historical revisionism growing in popularity, we are inching closer to coming full circle. As time passes, distancing us ever further from what happened 76 plus years ago, it becomes increasingly essential to preserve its memory. We ought to insist that our schools go beyond only teaching sub-group specific history, and cast a wider net to include global events to preserve a sense of proportion and perspective. Ignorance of history poses a significant threat to the future of a free society. Theo Wierdsma