Remembering the Holocaust: Why History Must Never Be Forgotten
LOUIS OCQUIDANT L6
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
This famous quote from Spanish philosopher George Santayana is one we have heard so many times that we ironically wish we could forget it. And yet we don’t in many academic circles: philosophy, theology, sociology, psychology, and history; we simply repeat it, fulfilling its prophecy. The event that is synonymous with this statement is the Holocaust, the mass industrialized eradication of 6 million Jewish men, women, and children at the hands of Nazi Germany and their collaborators. Pried from their homes. Kept as animals. Dying as people.
In March I had the privilege of participating in the Lessons From Auschwitz project, an educational experience organized by the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET). As the name suggests, this project centred around the extermination and labour camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, modern-day Oświęcim, Poland. This, along with educational modules, in-person seminars, and online chat forums, formed the backbone of the project.
In this article I aim to answer the question of why the Holocaust should not be forgotten in an effort to educate my fellow students by providing insight into why time matters, why the Holocaust is a biproduct of our own ignorance, and lastly, the profound effect the Holocaust had and continues to have on the Jewish community even after its end.
years have passed since the final camps were liberated, with the principal camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, being liberated in January 1945. The concept of time is an important one to the study and remembrance of the Holocaust because now more than ever it is running out. As a part of the project, I had the pleasure of meeting Steven Frank, a Jewish-Dutch who survived the camps of Westerbork and Theresienstadt. Apart from having remarkable energy for an 89-year-old man, the biggest surprise was that he was 7 years old during the Holocaust. Logically, given his age, it is safe to assume that the vast majority of remaining survivors were all children during the Holocaust. This poses a significant challenge; in time, there will be no one left to give testimony, the Holocaust will become an event of artifact rather than memory, and living history will be deceased. In a world where people actively deny the Holocaust when we still have people who experienced the ordeal, it is daunting to imagine how easily we may fall into Santayana’s trap and be doomed to repeat the horrors of the Holocaust. By actively making an effort as a society to remember the Holocaust for the historical event it was, we strive to prevent the descent back into savagery. Now more than ever, with time running out, we must take the precautions to engage with and familiarize ourselves with the event to prevent it from falling into distant obscurity within popular culture.
A key characteristic of the Holocaust that the LFA project aimed to shed light on was that of the events that culminated to allow the Holocaust to transpire. The LFA team placed a huge emphasis on pre-war Jewish life; it illustrated that the Jewish people were like any other people's group—some like to stick to themselves, and some integrate into their new nation. Another message the LFA team harped on was that the Nazis were not monsters. They were very much humans who wielded a dangerous narrative, which led to this immense persecution. Hitler was no ideological prophet; his own basis for his antisemitic teachings was the general historical attitude toward the Jewish communities. The halls of history are smeared by antisemitic events: Gaius Caesar threatened to tear down the holy temple in Jerusalem in the 1st century AD, the Middle Ages were filled with pogroms (anti-Jewish riots), and the Dreyfus affair in 1894, France, encapsulated the concept of the Jews as a scapegoat. The Nazis were not a unique breed of evil, and that is important to understand. By painting them as monsters, we detach ourselves from the possibility that we could somehow never commit such heinous acts because we are human in spirit and they were not. The Holocaust happened because we refused to remember the past time and time again; we proved Santayana right by allowing such a disaster to unfold. Through ignorance, you become culpable for the crime. Through understanding, you are actively preventing it.
Perhaps the most important thing to recognize and consider when applying the Holocaust to ourselves is the effect that one's actions have on others once the dust has settled. For the Jewish people, troubles did not end after the liberation of Europe and the camps. The Nazis were able to cultivate a reinvigorated hatred for the Jewish people, and they were able to commercialize it. A big factor of the Holocaust was economic exploitation. Seeing that there was profit to be made off of the deportation of a whole community, companies and individuals alike were opportunistic in acquiring wealth. A purpose of labour camps was to use this free labour to grow the German economy and to support the war effort. At the Auschwitz I museum there were several exploits on display, notably the exhibit containing 2 tons of human hair from the deceased victims, a fraction of the total amount. This hair was shipped back to Germany via the lengthy rail networks connecting the camps to the German economic heartland. It was then sold, and companies like the Schaeffer Group were spun into textiles. The Jewish people were treated like a product and cattle in every sense.
We are told to love thy neighbour as a principle of Christian teachings in Europe and also as a general moral principle, yet individuals also had a predatory response to the Jewish situation. Several documented accounts of neighbours occupying Jewish property and then refusing to give it back once the war was over across Europe have been well documented, even initiating pogroms in some places such as Kielce, Poland, in 1946, partly in response to requests for the return of property. Overall, the Jewish people suffered even after the legality of persecution was over; the displacement of financial capital and a place they could call home has led to profound impacts on their communities, not only in where they live but also in their conviction. Movements like Zionism (the movement for a Jewish homeland) would not have gained such traction if not for the Holocaust; the course of modern history and the Jewish community would have been vastly different. When reflecting upon the Holocaust, it teaches us a lesson about the consequences for our actions in the long run, providing us with better judgment, which promotes a prosperous future culturally, economically, and socially.
Notably, we should not let the past dictate our future. After the Holocaust, the Jewish community in Europe was effectively wiped out, yet today we see families like the Rothschilds enjoying great success and healthy communities of Jewish people in the UK, the US, and even a dedicated state in Israel. From the Jewish perspective, they have certainly rebounded and built up from the flashpoint of centuries of pent-up aggression. The aftermath of the Holocaust in itself teaches us a lesson and gives good reason for its remembrance. The past does not define us; it teaches us and motivates us to improve our own state. It gives us a sense of purpose and agency to act. Remembering one's origins is a necessary phase in achieving evolution; how we choose to interpret the past is what determines our future. The Holocaust perfectly exemplifies the positive side of this.
The significance of the LFA project is compounded by the constant disregard for the lessons of history in the modern world. Rwanda, Xinjiang, Darfur, Cambodia, and the list goes on. As a species, we are ignorant of the rotten fruits of our most devilish labours. As a Holocaust ambassador through the LFA project, you can become the custodian of a society’s actions and development and steer them on the right path away from objective violence. By acknowledging the past rather than deeming genocide a product of old ideas, you can actively cultivate a future that is just that little bit brighter as we sail into the dark abyss of an uncertain future. The Holocaust should be remembered because it serves as a reminder to us of what we should not do and as a reminder of what we should not accept.
I highly recommend participating in this lucrative opportunity. As a school, we are fortunate to have places every year in the project, which members of the history department coordinate and assign. If you are a student interested in history or the Holocaust or even an adventurous person who wants to see more of the world, you should seek out a spot when the opportunity arises. To learn more about the LFA project, speak to either myself, Mr. McDermott, or another member of the history department.
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