The anniversary that shows why the Holocaust must never be forgotten

Monday’s 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp is being held in the shadow of a baffling and corroding collective memory loss.

For much of those eight decades, the concentration camp was a real and symbolic representation of Nazi Germany’s barbaric policy of murdering 6 million Jews, or two-thirds of all of Europe’s Jews, in Holocaust camps and ghettoes via mass executions.

On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops arrived at the gates of Auschwitz and found some 7000 weak and emaciated prisoners. “People so thin that they swayed like branches in the wind,” Boris Polevoy, a correspondent for the Soviet newspaper Pravda wrote.

The horrifying reports, images and footage from the concentration camps liberated by the Allies stand stark and shocking against all the madness of Holocaust deniers in the years ahead, but the Herald’s Rob Harris, in Poland for the anniversary, reports that study has found a majority of people in Europe and the United States believe the Holocaust could reoccur today.

The study by the Claims Conference, which represents Jewish victims of Nazi persecution and their descendants, found 76 per cent of Americans thought the genocide could happen again, as did 61 per cent of Germans.

The Holocaust is fading for many. Nearly half of American adults could not identify any Holocaust killing sites and just over half of Romanians believed the 6 million toll had been “greatly” exaggerated. Almost half of young adults in France are unaware of the Holocaust and, although the German education system is required to teach Holocaust history, one in nine young Germans are ignorant, and a quarter are unable to name a single concentration camp.

But amid the ignorance and memory loss, attacks on synagogues, homes and businesses in Australia and new wars, about 50 Auschwitz survivors will attend Monday’s memorial in Poland and, knowing many will soon be gone, their voices carry profound poignancy as they remind world leaders and royalty that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Contemporary events will have an impact on this commemoration of the past. Despite the role played by Soviet troops in liberating the camp, Russian President Vladimir Putin is unwelcome due to his country’s invasion of Ukraine; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will stay away rather than risk arrest and face the International Criminal Court over his nation’s actions in Gaza; and thousands signed a petition opposing Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong leading Australia’s delegation.