From the Italian translation by Sandra Paoli
On January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz death camp was liberated by Soviet soldiers. This day became the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism. Eighty years have passed. In Auschwitz alone, between March 1942 and November 1944, more than a million people were murdered in an unprecedented madness of extermination. Today, “Auschwitz” is synonymous with Nazi racism, and in Germany, the commemorations are not limited to this day.
As I write today, January 18, 2025, I hear on the radio program BR-Kultur that on January 18, 1940, 25 men from the former sanatorium and nursing home in Haar (Munich) were deported and then murdered at the Grafeneck extermination center. They were the first of over two thousand people deported from Haar and murdered in the years that followed. Not a day goes by without a commemoration of the atrocities committed during the Nazi era.
We will be dealing with the Second World War for a long time to come, as there are other reminders of the madness. Unexploded ordnance is discovered almost every day at construction sites. The building of roads and houses is often delayed because bombs are found underground at the sites. The war not only cost the lives of many innocent people – it remains an emotional and financial burden today. What do the people who are kept away for many hours until the bomb is defused, allowing them to return to the warmth of their homes think? What crosses the minds of the elderly in such a situation? Do the younger ones think of their grandparents and great-grandparents: that they were only “fellow travelers” or outright Nazis? I wonder how many of these people will vote for the AfD in the Bundestag elections on February 23, 2025 in spite of all this? Have people learned nothing from history?
After the attack by Hamas from the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023 and Israel’s response, there has been a great deal of confusion about the use of the word ‘genocide’. On January 16, 2025, two historians, Prof. Blattmann and Prof. Goldberg of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote:
What is happening in Gaza is not what happened in Auschwitz, but it is part of the same family – the crime of genocide.
On the occasion of the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the focus of the discussions should be on the Holocaust, not the current situation in Israel and Gaza. But it would also be wrong to not mention the situation in the Middle East at all. On that day, Iris Berben was supposed to read a few pages from Chaja Polak’s book Letter in the Night. Thoughts on Israel and Gaza at the House of Literature in Munich. Chaja Polak is a leading voice in Dutch literature, and her essay offers a humanistic look at the conflict between Israel and Gaza. She examines the hostility in the Middle East, its history, and its ramifications with empathy and deep understanding for the victims. Her writing is dedicated to these complex and emotionally impactful events, and she calls for going beyond the limits of black and white. Moreover, Chaja Polak, born in 1942, is a Holocaust survivor. She wrote the book after the Hamas attack on October 23, 2023.
Following criticism from Josef Schuster, president of the Central Jewish Council in Germany, the initiative was moved forward by three days, even though the Documentation Center for National Socialism in Munich was among the co-organizers.
Schuster’s criticism of the initiative represents the position that the victims of the Holocaust and the wars in the Middle East must not compensate for each other. I wonder whether the Nazi persecution of the Jews justifies a senseless massacre by Israel in Gaza.
Voices calling for revenge and retaliation are very loud in Israel. A reading from Chaja Polak’s book, with its call for dialogue, reflection, and action, would be especially timely on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Polak passionately advocates for a future where empathy and understanding are the basis for lasting peace.
I cannot delve into the entire issue in this short article. I am not a general, nor a professor of 20th-century history. I can only say, in simple terms, that my grandparents fled Germany in 1933. They chose to go to Palestine. Many relatives preferred to flee to the United States. Memorial stones have been laid in Frankfurt am Main for some of them (some fled, others were killed). These memorial stones always remind me that Jews have lived in Germany for more than 1,700 years. After the Holocaust, Jewish communities were reestablished in Germany. My parents were still young in 1933. I was born in Israel in 1951. I was in the army between 1970 and 1973, and when the Yom Kippur War broke out on October 24, 1973, I was called up. At the time, I took it for granted that I would do anything for my country. However, in 1982, shortly after I was called up for the First Lebanon War, I realized that it would be the last time I would be willing to risk my life for a senseless war. The conflict cannot be resolved with weapons. Everyone involved must realize this. I have lived in Germany for a long time, and I continue to note how the Holocaust and the present are intertwined.
A.B. Yehoshua writes:
We, as victims of the Nazi microbe, must be carriers of the antibodies to this terrible disease which can afflict any people, and as carriers of those antibodies we must first of all take care of our relationship with ourselves.
The Middle East could be a paradise if all its inhabitants worked together to safeguard its ecology, its world heritage, and for liberalism.
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