![]() Yes, unfortunately, history tends to repeat itself. So, to quote writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi: "If something happened once, it can happen again"? And in today's Europe, at this time of great political turbulence, it is very important that everyone, especially young people, should remember what can happen if our basic values are not upheld and protected. Like World War I or the Napoleonic Wars or whatever.īut the Holocaust is much more than that because actually, Europe, as we know it today, is based on the lessons we learned from the crematoriums of Auschwitz: Never to repeat the mistakes of racism and colonialism in Europe today, but to protect its values. The great danger is that it's just going to turn into another statistic, another historic fact that is open for debate. What will it mean when there are no longer any living survivors? And therefore, I think movies are good, but real-life visits are also an extremely important factor. And that we all make sure that such a thing never happens again. And, therefore, it is very important that the lessons of the Holocaust should stay with every one of us, and the children and the grandchildren of the victims and the grandchildren of the perpetrators. It's going to be basically part of history. And as in that moment, it's not going to be any more a part of our lives. ![]() Yes, unfortunately, the last survivors are about to leave the world. The number of remaining Auschwitz survivors is declining rapidly now. And just two years ago my granddaughter was born in Philadelphia, in the United States. I can give you one example: My great-grandmother's name was Mariam Golda. I remember that moment.Īnd for you and your generation in Germany, what memories do you have of your relatives who were murdered? How do you commemorate them? I remember seeing the mountains of children's shoes in the museum. That was around the time he started to support the Auschwitz Museum and he took me along. Yes, my first visit to Auschwitz was in 1998 together with my wife, Dara, and Ronald Lauder (now president of the World Jewish Congress - Editor's note). It's at those times I remember seeing my grandfather crying or getting emotional about his parents and his brothers and sisters who were killed.ĭo you recall your first visit to the Auschwitz camp? I remember always my grandfather getting very, very upset during the memorial prayers. The Hungarian Jews (Goldschmidt's family came from Hungary - Editor's note) were mostly killed at the beginning of the summer in 1944, we don't know the exact day that they were killed. My grandparents almost never spoke about the Holocaust. I think it was such a loss that my grandfather had a hard time talking about it at any moment in his life. And so, my mother was really born in Switzerland. They stayed in Switzerland and that's what saved their lives. Yes, and they lived in Vienna and they came to Switzerland, to the Swiss Alps, to the sanatorium. My grandmother got tuberculosis a few weeks before the "Anschluss" (when Germany invaded Austria in 1938 - Editor's note). How did they speak to you about what happened, about how they felt about surviving, or about how they miss their brothers and sisters, their family? To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video ![]() that ended abruptly through this killing machine in Auschwitz. However, when you tell people, 'My great- grandfather was killed here, and I think the mother and the brothers, sisters of my grandfather,' - those victims are getting names those victims are getting faces, and each one had its own life. You know, people listen to my 'half-million children and 6 million human beings,' and it's a number which does not register with normal people. It's the problem of the Holocaust. It's the numbers. Can an outsider even empathize with such a loss? We stood there in the freezing cold, and then we were silent for a long time. And you told me that more than 40 of your relatives were murdered there by the Germans. In an interview with DW, the 58-year-old described the fate of his ancestors and gave his advice for the generations to come.ĭW: Rabbi Goldschmidt, seven years ago we met at the commemoration of the liberation on January 27 at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp memorial. The horror of Auschwitz is part of Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt's family history.
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