Evidence of the Holocaust is something I will never forget

Look around. Holocaust survivors are leaving us. It’s a fact that’ll be stated and restated today, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Thankfully survivors are dying after years of long life — not in the grip of unimaginable terror. And thanks to the efforts of Rositta Kenigsberg and others like her, we can take heart — their stories are being saved. But it’s a race against the clock.

“We’re losing them,” Kenigsberg, president of the Holocaust Documentation & Education Center, told me during a recent visit. “Each of these survivors told us that their parents, their family, whoever, said to them ‘If you should survive, please do everything you can to tell the world.’ ”

Volunteers at the Dania Beach center take the oral testimonies of Holocaust survivors and liberators. To date they’ve catalogued over 2,500 testimonies, along with 6,000 artifacts and photographs.

Time isn’t the only threat to the memory of Shoah survivors. There are those who deny the slaughter of 11 million at the hand of the Nazis. Yes, 11 million; 6 million Jews and, historians estimate, 5 million others targeted for who they were or what they believed. Gypsies, gays, people with disabilities, resistance fighters and many others were shuttled to their death. The mass graves, the gas chambers, the meticulous death logs and the stories — oh, so many stories — none of that matters to those who choose to be ignorant or just plain hate.

“Every single [survivor’s] story adds to the authentic memory, and puts that extra hammer in the declaration that this did happen. It can’t be distorted. It can’t be denied,” said Kenigsberg, herself born in a displaced-persons camp after the war.

It’s the affront to historical record and unshakable memories that tripped White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer after he told reporters earlier this month, in remarks about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons, that Adolf Hitler “didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.” How could he say that? Was it nerves? Did he just not know or is history that easy to forget? But we can’t forget. We have to get it right. We have to know history so we don’t repeat it.

Later, Spicer humbly — and believably — apologized for the comparison, calling it “inappropriate and insensitive.”

The rallying cry for Holocaust Remembrance Day is “Never forget.” We honor the memory of those who experienced the unthinkable by keeping it at the fore. We hold events like the Jewish Community Services of South Florida’s Shoah 5K Run held yesterday in North Miami Beach, or Sunday’s reading of “The Diary of Anne Frank” by Thinking Cap Theatre at the Vanguard in Fort Lauderdale. We highlight the “Names, Not Numbers” oral history project, in which eighth-grade students at Boca Raton’s Katz Hillel Day School interview survivors and turn film footage into a documentary.

When you come face to face with evidence of the Holocaust, you don’t forget it. In 2010 I visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to Holocaust martyrs and heroes. Within the first 10 minutes of entering the museum I was rattled to the core, sobbing. The propaganda posters of Jews as horned devils. The numbers tattooed on flesh. The small voices of children. The piles of castoff shoes. The photos of trenches filled with bodies. The endless lists of names. David Berger. Zvi Segal. Florika Liebmann. Yosef Laska. Bela Rodnianski. Tema Lea and her two children, Shifra and Salek.

The sad thing is, the Holocaust is just one horrendous event. Too many cultures have endured senseless slaughter of enormous proportions. Check the books. Mankind has a knack for treating mankind badly. But it’s not about comparing; it’s about remembering.

At the end of the tour, I exited Yad Vashem and saw a pink sunset over Jerusalem. And then I felt it — hope. There is a way out of darkness.

Holocaust survivors won’t always be with us, but their stories will be. Read them and never forget.

Elana Simms