Survivors unite to deliver message about Holocaust remembrance

NEW YORK >> Holocaust survivors across the world have united to deliver a message on the dangers of unchecked hate and the importance of remembrance at a time of rising global antisemitism.

In a video released Thursday to mark Yom HaShoah — Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day — 100 Holocaust survivors asked people to stand with them and remember the Nazi genocide to avoid repeating the horrors of the past.

The 100 Words project video was released by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also referred to as the Claims Conference. The group represents the world's Jews in negotiating for compensation and restitution for victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs, and provides welfare for Holocaust survivors around the globe.

“The world is full of strife — from the pandemic to the crisis happening in Ukraine — on remembrance days like Yom HaShoah, it is so important to stop and reflect,” Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Conference, said in a statement.

“The call to action these survivors put forth today is not only one of remembrance, but one of action, a reminder that we do not have to be bystanders. We can all stand up in our own way and we can choose to not let our collective history repeat itself.”

The project is being released as Russia faces widespread revulsion and accusations of war crimes over attacks on civilians in its invasion of Ukraine. It also comes at a time when Holocaust

survivors — now in their 80s and 90s — are dying, while studies show that younger generations lack even basic knowledge of the Nazi genocide, in which a third of the world's Jews were annihilated.

“If we do not remember them, we are murdering them twice because we have forgotten them. And we have forgotten the tragic travesty that was visited upon millions of people,” said Ginger Lane, a Holocaust survivor who along with her siblings was hidden in a fruit orchard near Berlin by non-Jews.