It was the summer of 1985. I was touring parts of Europe as one-third of a musical trio, and our adventures took us to southern Poland for a few days. There are many details about our stay that have evaporated from my memory. I do remember that the city we were in was called Katowice, the husband of the host family we stayed with was named Marek, and that his wife fortunately spoke German, the language we used to communicate with this dear couple.
But what will forever be seared into my memory is our visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau, the concentration camps where 1.3 million prisoners suffered at the hands of the Nazis and 1.1 million were murdered. 960,000 of these were Jews.
I can't forget the "showers" that were actual gas chambers. Or the long rows of holes they called toilets where the prisoners, herded in en masse, had ten seconds to do their business. Or the miles and miles of barbed wire and block after block of ghostly barracks where as many as 100,000 prisoners were crammed at one time.
This past Thursday, Jan. 27, was Holocaust Remembrance Day. Remembrance Day. I am privileged to have been able to visit this hell on earth in person. If you ever have the chance, I encourage you to do so as well. And yet most people will just have to accept the word of those who survived the Holocaust.
I recently read that "49% of US millennials and Generation Z have seen Holocaust denial or distortion content online, and and that one in five U.S. millennials and generation Z surveyed in New York believe that Jews caused the Holocaust."
How did this happen?
Because we have stopped remembering.
We have not told our children about the errors of the past. It either doesn't occur to us to tell them or we prefer not to talk about it. After all, who enjoys talking about the extermination of 6 million Jews?
And soon there will be no more survivors to share their anguished, first-hand accounts.
And so amnesia takes over.
I admit that at my age my memory is often patchy at best. Some things I've forgotten are probably just as well. There is such a thing as good amnesia. But the amnesia that forgets the gargantuan atrocities committed in relatively recent history is the kind that dooms us to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Let us never stop remembering.