Holocaust Remembrance Day 2018: Is the Holocaust Fading From Memory?

The April 12, 2018, New York Times article by Maggie Astor “Holocaust Is Fading From Memory, Survey Finds” begins (boldface is mine):

For seven decades, “never forget” has been a rallying cry of the Holocaust remembrance movement.

But a survey released Thursday, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, found that many adults lack basic knowledge of what happened — and this lack of knowledge is more pronounced among millennials, whom the survey defined as people ages 18 to 34.

Thirty-one percent of Americans, and 41 percent of millennials, believe that two million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust; the actual number is around six million. Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was. And 52 percent of Americans wrongly think Hitler came to power through force.

(Note that Holocaust Remembrance Day — Yom HaShoah in Hebrew — is based on the Jewish calendar, which means that the actual date varies from year to year. In 2018 the date is the evening of April 11th starting after sunset and going to sunset on April 12.)

In the April 4, 2018, Jewish Journal article “Is There Anything Left to Say About the Holocaust?” author Thane Rosenbaum writes:

The Holocaust was always a moral mystery. Unfathomability always has been its greatest allure. The mystery was never meant to be solved. The crimes of the Nazis consigned everyone — Jew and non-Jew — to a perpetual state of obligation. “Never Again” didn’t just mean that Jewish genocide would never be permitted to reoccur. It also meant that the world would never be finished with the Holocaust; it would always continue to haunt. The burden to remember the Holocaust, to hold it in mind and body as both emblem and amulet, is infinite and never ending.

At an early lunch today at a nearby Israeli-owned restaurant, I chatted with a stranger about the meaning of the Holocaust. I told her about the Holocaust-themed play I’m writing, and she asked, “What is the purpose of remembering the Holocaust if not as a call to arms?”

She referred to keeping a vigilant eye on the political climate of a democratic country, and acting in a timely manner if democratic rights are curtailed — not when it is too late to reverse the tide.

The Holocaust-themed play on which I’m now working is based on the material for my Holocaust memoir SURVIVORS AND SAVIORS. Click here to read about the memoir.

Click here for the survey mentioned in The New York Times article — “New Survey by Claims Conference Finds Significant Lack of Holocaust Knowledge in the United States.”

And in conclusion, in memory of 94-year-old Holocaust survivor Sally Marco (born Sala Landowicz), whose funeral I attended this week, here is her two-hour Shoah Foundation witness testimony:

Click here to read about Sally Marco in the May 7, 2015, BBC News article “Tracing the children of the Holocaust.”