What happens when there are no more living Holocaust survivors?

MIRAH LANGER

This is a sensitive, painful, almost taboo question to ask – and yet, in the decades to follow, it holds an anxiety that needs to be addressed.

For Holocaust survivor Irene Klass, there will be a stark difference once there are no more of her generation to tell their stories in person. Yet, she believes, the history will continue to evolve in the hands of those to come.

“It will not be the same as a survivor who went through it, telling the story… You read the testimony; I’m the one who went through it,” says Klass, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto who now lives in Johannesburg.

Yet, she affirms, it is a history that is very much alive, and it will become the duty, “generation to generation”, to safeguard it as such.

“Our stories have to live through the children. Our stories have to be told to the future generations,” she affirms.

Some 300 to 400 survivors of the Holocaust settled in South Africa after the war. Today, there are about 35.

Many of those in Johannesburg are part of a survivors’ group affiliated with the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre. They continue to fulfil what they deem is their duty: sharing their story whenever, wherever and to whomever they are asked.

Tali Nates, director of the centre, says historians have long considered the dynamics of a history without living witnesses. However, she adds, the paradox is that “Holocaust history is not the past”.

Instead, it remains a dynamic narrative. “It is a complex, fascinating history that will continue to shift and grow.”

As Nates points out, even the positioning of survivors is something that has changed over time. At first, in the years immediately after the war, there was not an immediate call for eye witnesses to speak out.

Instead there was often a “suspicion held by people in society”, to the point where they even “accused the Holocaust survivors for surviving”. As a result, many survivors opted to remain in a “conspiracy of silence”.

Then, in the 1980s and ’90s, there was a shift.“Enough time passed to start understanding the history and the need to understand the history,” says Nates.

Large-scale collections of testimony began, particularly by Yale University in the US in the 1980s, and through filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s 1994 film, Schindler’s List, which earned seven Academy Awards and prompted Spielberg to set up a Shoah Foundation, dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust. More than 52 000 testimonies worldwide were collected through this project. Since January 2006, the foundation has partnered with the University of Southern California (USC) and is known as the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education.

By the late 20th century, for the survivors too, there was now some distance and possibly more of a sense of stability through which to begin to reflect on their war experiences.

“In the ’80s and ’90s they have established their families and they are old enough to start talking,” says Nates.

Once their stories emerged into the public consciousness, the survivors were embraced.

Nowadays, says Nates, “they are a symbol of resilience, of meaning… of beating the odds, of losing everything and building a life. They are the wisdom of the ages, the voice of morality. We are afraid to lose that symbol.”

Yet, she says, the Holocaust remains “one of those defining moments of world history” and the legacy of the survivors will be upheld. “There will be people who will continue the stories; there will be pictures and documents and films.”

Nates mentions a project being conducted by the Shoah Foundation. It involves creating holograms of survivors – not just of the Holocaust but of other genocides as well.

The survivors are filmed in a special multi-camera green zone setting, where they answer thousands of questions. From this footage, a hologram is created which, in the future, will be able to interact with visitors by answering questions posed.

“That is the next use of technology,” says Nates.

For Nates, this project demonstrates how, instead of public interest into the Holocaust fading over time, studies into the subject keep developing. They branch off into new areas of focus, methodology and meaning.

“There are things that have only emerged in the last five or 10 years that were previously never spoken of.”

For example, she explains, in the past a large proportion of research focused on the concentration camps. Now many researchers are looking at other sites of killings: the stories of “the million and a half at least who were murdered, who never got to Auschwitz or the ghetto”.

Moreover, as society grapples with issues like gender or sexual violence, these areas of inquiry have also begun to be directed to the Holocaust experience.

Testimony is being collected from an ever-expanding range of witnesses. Beyond the victims’ experience, there is now more research on the perpetrators, the collaborators, the rescuers – and, most recently, an interest in hearing the perspective of the bystanders.

“Research is moving; archives are opening. As we know more, we can write more,” explains Nates.

Despite the small size of its survivor community, South Africa has continuously engaged with this part of history.

Even before the Spielberg project, in the 1980s the SA Union of Jewish Students embarked on its Student Holocaust Interviewing Project (SHIP) in which students recorded testimonies on audio cassette as part of a national project.

Still today, the three Holocaust centres – in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban – continue to collect stories, even at times from survivors who have not previously given a public account of their experiences.

At times, the centres also re-interview those who might have given testimony before. In these cases, they are looking for specific details or angles, such as a focus on settling in South Africa after the war.

The centres are also currently recording the stories of people born in Europe, but who now live in South Africa, who saved Jews during the war.

Ultimately, Nates suggests that for the Jewish community, time has not diminished the impact of the Holocaust. Instead, it has reinforced its significance.

“I hope the Rabbonim won’t mind my saying that it is as important as many events in our biblical history. It is a part of our history… and it very much forms part of our narrative.”

Yet, while the future offers opportunities for ever-expanding nuance and a broadened scope of insight into the Holocaust, Nates issues a warning about the danger of time passing: “You have to be careful of deniers of history,” she cautions.