Even 80 years on, there’s no birdsong in Auschwitz
When she visited as a schoolgirl, Sabrina came away feeling the death camp’s legacy was that such horrors would never happen again. But returning now, after October 7, she found it hard not to despair...
There may be no machine-gun toting SS guards in the Auschwitz watchtowers these days, but these red- brick constructions have lost none of their power to chill the blood.
They survey endless stretches of barbed- wire fence that surround a complex so vast that, even today, it still ‘flashes afresh to hold and horrify’, as the poet Philip Larkin once wrote.
Prison blocks, warehouses, crematoria, gas chambers and Josef Mengele’s sinister ‘ hospital’ make up a death camp that conducted slaughter on an industrial scale.
More than 1.1 million innocent people were killed here in the space of three years during World War II, including thousands gunned down by Nazi soldiers after being lined up against the camp’s notorious Black Wall.
I visited Auschwitz, 40 miles from Krakow in southern Poland, as part of a two- day conference organised by the european Jewish Association to coincide with last weekend’s holocaust Memorial Day.
‘Standing here, we are reminded of the darkest times of the Jewish people and europe,’ said former Israeli president reuven rivlin during a profoundly moving memorial service inside the camp. ‘Seventy-nine years ago, when Birkenau-Auschwitz was liberated, we coined the slogan “Never Again”. Until now, I was sure the whole world learnt a lesson. But since October 7, I have been wondering: “Are those words just words, or do they mean something?” ’
he was referring, of course, to the massacre by hamas terrorists nearly four months ago of 1,200 Israelis — the largest number of Jews killed in a single day since the holocaust.
SINCE then, the Western world has experienced a terrifying rise in antiSemitism. chants in favour of hamas and Jew-hating houthi pirates ring throughout the streets of Britain almost every Saturday.
In London, members of my own Jewish family were told by strangers on the Tube to ‘go f*** themselves’ shortly after the war in Gaza began. A friend’s university flat was broken into and vandalised by someone who left behind a ‘Free Palestine’ note.
Meanwhile, in Vienna, a Jewish cemetery was firebombed; in Paris, Jewish homes and businesses were marked with the Star of David; and in the mainly Muslim russian republic of Dagestan, a mob of violent men shouting ‘ Allahu akbar!’ (God is great) stormed an airport in search of Jews arriving on a flight from Tel Aviv.
In this fresh atmosphere of terror, almost every Jew feels that the dark lessons of the holocaust have been reanimated. So it has never been more meaningful to visit Auschwitz and bear witness to the worst evils of mankind. As we toured the grim edifices of the camp, I was struck by the absence of birdsong, as if even the wildlife recognise that there is no place for music at a site of such barbarity.
What I did hear was the murmur of the Kaddish, the traditional Jewish mourning prayer, typically recited by family members of the deceased, as some of my fellow visitors paid homage to the dead.
Stones — traditionally placed on Jewish graves in an act of remembrance — are left scattered near plaques or the remains of the gas chambers.
Macabre evidence of the Nazis’ crimes is still here for everyone to see — despite their feverish attempts to cover up any trace of their genocide as the red Army approached.
Documents were burned, pits containing human ashes were filled in, crematoria were blown up or dismantled and property stolen from Jewish inmates was carried off to Germany.
But time was not on their side and gas chambers remain as monuments to their evil, as do many of the belongings of those killed, which have been preserved behind large glass windows. Mounds of plaited hair, shaved from the heads of approximately 30,000 female corpses, in a chilling variety of shades, textures and styles. Another room houses a collection of thousands of pairs of mangled spectacles.
The Nazis also left behind thousands of pairs of children’s shoes, 3,800 suitcases and 12,000 pots and pans, all stolen from dead Jews.
The holocaust is still — just — in living memory. This place is not a mere educational facility: for Jews, it is a living site of mourning and remembrance.
And that is especially true for Gidon Lev, 89, whose father was murdered while being transported from Auschwitz to another camp, Buchenwald, over 400 miles away.
‘Being in Auschwitz is horrific,’ he told me.
Gidon was just six when he was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp in his native czechoslovakia with his family in 1941. Some 26 of the family were murdered between 1939-1945. But — against all odds — Gidon managed to survive.
‘The entire time [we were on the tour] I just kept thinking about how cold everything was. Freezing. The walls. The rooms. Just imagine the men and women trapped here, wearing only thin pyjamas. Just surviving the cold must have been horrific.
‘And not knowing what awaits you. everybody, just trying to somehow survive. It’s awful,’ he said.
Gidon Lev has accumulated 500,000 followers on TikTok by sharing educational videos about the Shoah, the hebrew word for the holocaust, meaning ‘catastrophe’. But after October 7, he was forced to abandon the app.
‘People kept commenting, “You are a liar Gidon” underneath my videos,’ he told me. ‘My only response is that I truly wish it [the holocaust] was a lie. I would have had a father, a grandmother, a grandfather, my aunts, uncles and cousins. I would have had a childhood. But because of the holocaust I had none of these things.’
countless Jewish families have been tragically torn apart by the holocaust and the October 7 attacks. In some cases, holocaust survivors were directly affected by both. Like Moshe ridler, 91, who at nine years old survived life inside a concentration camp, but was shot dead alongside his carer by hamas terrorists in his home in Kibbutz holit.
his tragic tale is, unfortunately, not unique. Joining me in Auschwitz were architects Shira and Moshe Shapira. Their son, BritishIsraeli Aner Shapiro, 22, died protecting revellers at the Nova music festival. he stood heroically at the entrance of a bomb shelter while 27 people cowered inside. As terrorists threw grenades into it, he threw them back out again. he did this seven times before he was killed in an explosion.
MORE than 80 years earlier, in 1939, Aner’s great-grandfather haim Moshe Shapiro met Adolf eichmann, one of the chief architects of the holocaust. eichmann was at the time in charge of the ‘central Office for Jewish emigration’, set up in Vienna by the SS, which was authorised to issue exit permits for Jews from Austria.
haim rescued thousands of Jews by acquiring permits for them to travel to Palestine and by paying ransoms for them. haim saved their lives. But, tragically, his own family were left behind in Lithuania and were murdered.
Generations of the Shapiro family have been stalked and brutalised by bloodthirsty antiSemites. And yet Aner’s parents have seemingly boundless reserves of strength. Moshe Shapiro told me: ‘Aner’s final moments are a symbol of kindness. he was willing to give his life for people he didn’t even know. We must make it clear that there is an absolute distinction between good and evil.’
Being back in Auschwitz in the wake of the October 7 attacks, I found that much has changed.
When I first visited this mass grave with my Jewish school more than six years ago, the sadness I felt was punctured by moments of hope. After visiting the death camp, we would gather together and proudly sing Jewish songs in the streets of Poland.
We would pray openly and feel safe in the knowledge that Jewish people around the world were largely happy and free. But this time, it was hard to feel anything except misery.
To me now, Auschwitz
forever be a place devoid of hope. And the few stories of survival are dwarfed by the sheer magnitude of death and untold tales of people who could not escape their fate.
Jewish people are once again hiding, even in Britain: removing head coverings, speaking Hebrew in hushed tones, tucking in their Star of David necklaces.
Yet people like the Shapiro family act as a testament to the Jewish spirit of survival. Despite generations of persecution, they are back in Auschwitz to honour the dead and educate the living.
HAIM and his wife’s great-grandson bravely died fighting for what is right. To honour him, we must perpetuate that message.
It was somehow appropriate that Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X — a social media site that offers a platform to trolls of all stripes — joined the trip to Auschwitz and made a presentation at the European Jewish Association’s conference. ‘It was incredibly moving and deeply sad and tragic that humans could do this to other humans,’ he said. ‘It’s good to have the memorial so it never happens again. I am still absorbing the magnitude of what we witnessed. I think it will take a few days.’
He added: ‘I was frankly naive about antiSemitism. In the circles I move in, I see almost no anti-Semitism.
‘[But anti-Semitism] on X is never going to be zero. If you have 600 million people on a platform, expecting it to be zero is extremely unlikely.’
Musk is right. Yet the magnitude and calculated nature of the Holocaust are what set it apart from ‘everyday’ anti-Semitism on social media.
Never has it been more vital to remind the world of the depths to which this hatred can sink. We must not look away.
Today, we are at a tipping point. As we recall the horrors of the Holocaust, we must redouble our efforts to fight the scourge of anti-Semitism. Or the chants of hatred ringing out on our streets will only get louder.