80 Auschwitz survivors film life lessons to mark 80 years since liberation
Created by The Claims Conference, new series of video testimonies from Auschwitz survivors aims to help young people ‘listen to their voices and carry their stories forward’
Reporter at The Times of Israel
When Auschwitz survivor Aron Krell’s brother Zvi was dying in the Lodz ghetto in 1944, the boy left his family with the final words, “Please never forget me.”
Before the Holocaust, Zvi Krell was a wiry soccer player. But after the Nazis confined the Jews of Lodz to a ghetto, Zvi succumbed to starvation. His brother Aron and the rest of the family were then deported to Auschwitz.
“I lost not only Zvi, but my brother Moshe and my mother, Esther, in the Holocaust. I survived five concentration camps and ghettos — including Auschwitz,” said Aron Krell.
Eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945, Krell is one of 80 survivors who shared life lessons for a social media campaign produced by the Claims Conference. Clips from the survivors will be featured on TikTok and Instagram for two weeks leading up to International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27.
Titled “I Survived Auschwitz: Remember This,” the campaign was inspired by Krell’s commitment to fulfill his brother’s dying wish, according to the Claims Conference.
“I know many people can’t fathom what I have endured. But you can understand loving a brother like I loved Zvi, can imagine the unbearable pain that comes with losing one, and, hopefully, agree that the lessons of the Holocaust must always be remembered,” said Krell.
According to the Claims Conference, this will probably be the last year that the organization will be able “to launch a campaign with the participation of people who are still with us and can testify to the horrors that were there.”
Auschwitz has long been the Holocaust’s central symbol. As the Nazi death camp with the largest number of victims, Auschwitz also hosted Nazi physicians who conducted gruesome medical experiments on inmates.
On Facebook, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum reported that 50 survivors are expected to attend this month’s on-site commemoration. The former death camp is one of Poland’s top pilgrimage and tourism sites, with 1,670,000 people visiting the state museum in 2023.
The Germans built Birkenau next to prewar Polish military barracks on the edge of the town Oswiecim, the Polish name for Auschwitz. Six gas chamber facilities were constructed at Birkenau. Four of the gas chambers were equipped with crematoriums to eliminate thousands of corpses on a daily basis.
One million Jews from across Europe were deported to Birkenau and murdered in gas chambers. The Nazis also murdered 100,000 people from other target groups, including Polish clergy and intellectuals, Romani people, and Soviet prisoners of war.
In addition to featuring living survivors, the Claims Conference’s awareness campaign will include clips about — for example — Elie Wiesel, Anne Frank, and other people imprisoned at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
In their testimonies for the campaign, Holocaust survivors answered the question, “Given your experience as an Auschwitz survivor, what is one specific thing — a person, a moment or an experience — you want people to remember for generations to come?”
“The horrors that occurred at Auschwitz were an evil that no human should ever endure, but also an evil that no human should ever forget,” said Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Conference.
“While it is difficult to imagine oneself in a concentration camp, we can all relate to wanting people to remember loved ones we’ve lost, experiences that shaped us and moments that were important to us. It is critical that we educate future generations about Auschwitz,” said Taylor.
‘To lead your child to death’
Situated near key railway lines, Birkenau — birch grove, in German — was a death camp where healthy victims were selected for death through forced labor. Children, the elderly, and those unfit to work were lulled into taking showers after a “selection” process adjacent to the boxcars in which they arrived.
Surrounded by factories key to Germany’s war effort, Auschwitz-Birkenau was Europe’s largest forced labor exchange. For Jews selected to die through labor, working in a factory within the Auschwitz “zone of interest” was an opportunity for smuggling, communicating, and potentially revolting against the SS.
Judith Hervé-Elkán, 98, survived Auschwitz and is part of the Claims Conference’s Auschwitz campaign. Her most harrowing memory involves the children brought to Auschwitz, each of them destined for death.
“The mother dying with her child in her arms, leading her child to death, is, for me the most terrible of the images I still see today. So many mothers, not knowing what awaited them, didn’t let go of their children, their babies, their little ones. What is more terrible in the world than to lead your child to death,” said Hervé-Elkán.
A through line across testimonies from survivors is the compulsion to remember what took place. The sentiment was expressed by Jona Laks, a twin who survived notorious SS physician Josef Mengele’s experiments.
“I remember that day, at that same moment when we were left alone on the death march, I vowed that I would dedicate all my energy, all my time, everything, to telling, documenting, conveying to people and telling what happened. Because it is impossible for such a dark period to disappear from people’s knowledge and not enter history,” said Laks.
