As the bright lights of Holocaust survivors fade from our world into the darkness of history, it is difficult to imagine that the genocide will mantain its importance, especially given rising degrees of antisemitism.
A report on Tuesday by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany report reminded the world of the obvious — that in the next decade, most of our Holocaust survivors will pass on. The world will lose 70% of its Holocaust survivors in the next 10 years and 90% over the next 15 years.
The impending loss and such a report seems needlessly obvious, but a truth that many try not to dwell on — all things end, and there will soon come a time in which there are no more living Holocaust survivors. This self-evident statement is unspoken as historians, activists, and survivors rush to archive stories and try to develop innovations and methods to share them when this chapter of Jewish history comes to a close. Yet it is doubtful that any invention, no matter how ingenious or well-meaning, could ever relate the individual impact of the industrial massacre of the Jewish people better than those that felt and experienced it first bloody hand.
There might be solace found in the museums and monuments erected around the world devoted to the subject of the genocide that burned away over a third of the Jewish people, if like other devoted historical subjects there was not a massive network of denial, subversion, and manipulation to match. The vandalization of Holocaust memorials in red paint or graffiti protesting Levantine wars is a biweekly event in Europe, criminal but not as unpopular as one might hope.
The power of remembering
The memory of the Holocaust had always created a bulwark against antisemitism in the West, a ubiquitous reminder of the extreme evils of the anti-Jewish animus and its ultimate end. Yet without the survivors to share their stories, there is fear that the dam will break, or overflow, as the flow of history proves to be too much of a constant, and the respite of the norm of pogroms, exile, and persecution return.
For antisemites to succeed, the Holocaust must be set aside. This is why so many of them, across the political spectrum, fixate on the Holocaust as much as any current event. With antisemites growing in strength, these challenges to the memory of the survivors grows as well. According to an April 22 Anti-Defamation League report, there was a 5% increase of recorded antisemitic incidents in the United States. This is not an isolated report, with records of antisemitic incidents across the world only rising.
As the West falters, and extreme ideologies seize advantage of civilizational uncertainty, popular old traditions of antisemitism have been revived from obscurity, and the story of the Holocaust has been cast as irrelevant at best, and an ideological threat at worst.
It would not be unreasonable for anyone who has scrolled through social media to come to the conclusion that Generation Z and Alpha do not seem to be aware of the moral weight of the Holocaust — To many it appears to be yet another genocide, yet another quirk of history to be learned — at least in theory — in schools. Generation Beta may never meet a Holocaust survivor — it may be that World War II will be no more alien to their mindset than the American Civil War. For some Europeans, they have heard enough about the Holocaust, and want to move on. A catch-22 has been created in Holocaust education, as investing more into the subject raises resentment among some about it being shoved down their throats, but no education dooms the matter to be forgotten, or twisted, or even repeated.
A January Claims Conference report showed that basic Holocaust knowledge was lacking in eight countries, and half the respondents feared a similar event could occur. The November survey found that 46% of French, 15% of Romanian, 14% of Austrian, and 12% of German 18-29 year old adults had not heard of the Holocaust. The survey claimed that 16% of Americans, 17% of British, 19% of Hungarian, 23% of Polish and Romanian, 24% in German, and 25% of French and Austrian respondents disagreed that the Holocaust happened as described.
It's difficult for any Jew to take to social media, or listen to popular podcasts, or even attend university without seeing the West's understanding of the Holocaust and its lessons crumble. Among ever spreading jihadist Islamism, the Holocaust either didn't happen because they don't want to acknowledge the suffering of their enemies, the Jews, or they wish it did happen and want to perform the Holocaust themselves.
Liberals have endeavored to universalize the message of the Holocaust of the point that they often opt to remove mention of Jews when discussing the event — often because they don't want to offend Jew-haters.
Far-left progressives only are interested in the Holocaust as far as they can weaponize its moral weight to fix atop a club to beat political enemies, especially Israelis. If anything, the Holocaust is inconvenient for the movement's radicals because it speaks to an injustice committed to a group they now ascribe racial and class privilege.
Among the emerging "woke right," as commentator James Lindsay has described them, podcasters that are either grifting, audience captured, or self-radicalizing have taken critique of media and world order to an extreme, assuming any axioms like the Holocaust or narratives on Jews to be false. Recognizing that the West has stumbled, they fall back on the old traditions of blaming and scapegoating the small minority of Jews for all that ails them or their nations. Desiring to return to a better time, they blame a supposed post-war consensus as a whole, seeking to question or destroy once settled beliefs, from the heroism of Sir Winston Churchill, to the villainy of Adolph Hitler, to the validity of the Holocaust and its lessons.
On the back of such axiomatic uncertainty, long discredited white supremacy and fascism has been roused as of late, creeping back from the dark corners of the Internet to hang Nazi banners in the streets of Sweden or march through Nashville.
With ever escalating antisemitism, sometimes it seems baseless to hope that the West will hold onto its post-Holocaust promise, "Never again." "Never Again" that Jews would be rounded up, exiled, slaughtered, raped in pogroms. The outpour of cheer and militancy in support of the Hamas-led 2023 pogrom in Israel, with the denial of any and all atrocities out of strategic, political, or ideological necessity, only lends to this dread.
The world may forget the Holocaust.
Yet the Jews will not forget. When Holocaust survivor Rena Quint was asked on Tuesday if she feared that the decline of her peers would lead to the relegation of their stories and memories to the annals of history. In response, Quint cited the apocryphal story of Napoleon Bonaparte witnessing Jews mourning on Tisha Be'av and remarking that “A nation that cries and fasts for over 2,000 years for their land and Temple will surely be rewarded with both.”
The Jews never forget. We remember the suffering of Egyptian captivity. We remember the attempted genocide of Haman. We remember the persecution of the Hellenists. We remembered by the rivers of Babylon, and in the shtetls of Europe.
States and empires, nations and civilizations, they have come and gone within the collective memory of the Jewish people, who tell the stories from generation to generation so that they will not be forgotten. The shared memories of the atrocities committed by the Assyrian Empire or the Babylonians only exist with the Jews.
A world without Holocaust survivors is terrifying, but inevitable. Yet it would not be the end of the story or memory, just the end of their responsibility, which will be taken up by their families. Remembering the Holocaust will change, but it will not be forgotten. We are not just the people of the book, but people of memory, the realm to which the oral law was once committed.
The world may ultimately forget the Holocaust, but the Jews will not. We never forget. We remember, we remember.
