From Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., anti-Semitism is on the rise again, echoed by celebrities with a wide audience, such as Kanye West and Kyrie Irving. For Jewish people who remember the Holocaust—or those who, like me, survived it—this blatant bigotry is nothing new. Although the Holocaust ended more than 75 years ago, these examples point to how hatred towards Jewish people continues to this day, along with Holocaust denial.
In a way, I can understand the impulse to want to distance myself from atrocities like the Holocaust that expose a bad side of humanity. In a few cases I have come across people who are skeptical or deny that the Holocaust happened at all. While it is difficult to confront those who outright deny my experience, these interactions only underline the importance of my work.
As a survivor, I have made it my mission to honor the memory of the Jewish people by sharing my story with the world. I have come to see education as one of the most powerful tools we have to prevent violence and promote peace and understanding. Through interviews and speeches over the years, I have given my account of the Holocaust and the ways anti-Semitism continues to threaten our society. I have visited schools and libraries and attended many events to tell my story as a Jewish person in World War II.
I feel privileged to be a voice for the millions of voiceless victims murdered by the Nazi regime. But it is not only my duty – it is the duty of each of us to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive in the face of an apathetic world.
The Nazi regime killed more than 6 million people. The regime sowed hatred among the German and European people and prospered by making our differences into dangers and inferiorities. During the war, nearly 100 of my relatives belonged to the Jewish people who perished in the Nazi concentration camps. My mother and brother were just two of many.
After years of living in the Lodz Ghetto, a Nazi-established region of Poland where Jewish people were exploited for their labour, I was sent to Auschwitz in 1944, where I survived the rest of the war. After the end of the war, I began to rebuild my life, first in Sweden and finally in the United States.
At the beginning of the war, Germany was considered an enlightened country. For a long time, Germans were at the forefront of culture, art, music and philosophy. Nevertheless, Nazism rose and spread throughout German society, culminating in genocide. In today’s United States, we are not yet dealing with the climate of Germany in those pre-war years, but it is important that we remain vigilant against the rise of anti-Semitism before it takes off. According to the Anti-Defamation League, there were more than 1,500 anti-Semitic incidents in the US this year alone. We must not become complacent and callous to these acts of hatred.
We owe it to the victims of the Holocaust, those who lost their lives and those who survived, to remember them. Scholars have said that “the last act of genocide is the denial of genocide”. We must acknowledge the horror they have endured or we will once again deny them their humanity.
The Jewish people will never regain all that they lost during the Nazi regime, but the world owes it to them to continue to speak and listen, to teach and to learn, to ensure that our suffering will never be forgotten.
David Lenga, 95, is an Auschwitz survivor. He lives in Woodland Hills. © 2022 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.