Survivor stories shine spotlight on Auschwitz liberation anniversary
JERUSALEM >> Shortly before they were rounded up by Nazi troops in Belgium and deported to Auschwitz in 1942, the parents of 3-year-old Maurice Gluck placed their only child in the care of a local Christian family. Gluck forgot his Yiddish mother tongue and that he even had parents of his own.
After the war, his devastated father came to claim him and several months later he was introduced to a weeping woman who showered him with hugs and kisses.
“My father said: ‘Look Maurice, this is your mother, Helen,’” he recalled.
Only years later did Gluck discover that his birth mother had actually perished along with more than a million other Jews in the Auschwitz death camp. Helen was in fact his aunt.
“She discovered that her sister had died so she looked for ways to find me immediately,” Gluck explained, choking back tears. “She was my only mother and will always be my mother.”
Seventy-five years after
Auschwitz was liberated, Gluck is one of 75 Holocaust survivors featured in a commemorative photo project that Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial produced along with award-winning German portrait photographer Martin Schoeller.
The exhibition, which opened Tuesday before German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Ruhr Museum in Essen, is just one of the various events marking the anniversary and commemorating its victims as the notorious camp’s few and aging survivors slowly disappear.
Merkel said the portraits should be a reminder to everyone “to stand up for humanity, a reminder...not to stay silent and look the other way when someone is attacked, humiliated or their dignity is harmed.”
Yad Vashem is also unveiling its online iRemember Wall, a six-language interactive platform linking users to the memorial’s vast database of victims.
The main ceremony will be the World Holocaust Forum on Thursday, in which dozens of world leaders will arrive in Jerusalem for the largest-ever gathering focused on commemorating the genocide and combating modern-day anti-Semitism. Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Prince Charles and the presidents of Germany, Italy and Austria are among the more than 40 dignitaries who will be attending the event.
It comes amid a global spike in violence against Jews and in a climate in which a survey showed that 80% of European Jews said they felt unsafe in the continent. Tel Aviv University researchers reported last year that violent attacks against Jews grew significantly in 2018, with the largest reported number of Jews killed in antiSemitic acts in decades. They recorded 400 cases, with the spike most dramatic in western Europe. In Germany, for instance, there was a 70% increase in anti-Semitic violence. In addition to the shooting attacks, assaults and vandalism, the research also noted increased anti-Semitic vitriol online and in newspapers, as extremist political parties grew in power in several countries.