Who Will Remember the Holocaust in the Future?

Die Presse, January 27, 2023

German original: https://www.diepresse.com/6243448/wer-erinnert-sich-kuenftig-noch-an-den-holocaust

by Katrin Nussmayr

The era of contemporary witnesses is slowly coming to an end. This not only affects the culture of remembrance, but also research: some questions can only be asked today.

If Anne Frank were still alive, she would be 93 years old today. When she died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, she was fifteen. There are hardly any Holocaust survivors left who experienced the horror of the Nazi era as adults. Those who today - also on the occasion of the International Holocaust Memorial Day on Friday - can tell a young generation about their memories, were mostly children themselves at that time. And they, too, are becoming fewer and fewer: the era of contemporary witnesses is coming to an end.

For historian Heidemarie Uhl, who studies the culture of memory and the politics of history, this end has two dimensions: On the one hand, moral authorities would also disappear with the contemporary witnesses - and their attitudes to certain places. At liberation ceremonies of concentration camps, for example, we could still hear the perspective of those who experienced these camps. "If these people are no longer there, who will speak? Politicians, artists? It won't be the same." Second, he said, we will soon have to rely on what remains: countless interviews on video and audio recordings. But new questions can then no longer be asked. However, "every generation has new questions for history."

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Michaela Raggam-Blesch, who is researching at the Institute of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna on how so-called mixed marriage families were able to survive during the Nazi era - a topic that has not been dealt with academically for a long time. She has conducted more than 60 interviews with contemporary witnesses in her career. "I realize more and more what a great privilege this is. For younger female colleagues, it's not so easy anymore."