The last survivors of the Nazi concentration camps were liberated in 1945.

For the most part, the Jews who were allowed to live (mostly as slaves) in the concentration camps were those of working age. The old and the young (typically age 14 or lower) were often exterminated either soon after arriving at a concentration camp, or in the periodic “selections” that took place whenever the Nazis wanted to reduce concentration camp populations.

Add all of the above facts together, and we can conclude that the vast majority of the youngest of the concentration camp survivors are now in their 80s. (There are a few miraculous exceptions such as Tova Friedman, who is 71.) That means that right now, the number of concentration camp survivors still living is creeping inexorably toward its permanent zero.

Within a few years, there will be none left.

There will be none left to tell first-hand of the pounding on their doors in the middle of the night by SS or Gestapo or by locals who were incited by the Nazis.

There will be none left to tell first-hand of being crammed into rickety boxcars or cattle-cars, with standing room only, with almost no ventilation, with no food and little water, with no seats or facilities, to spend days and nights in the dark, moving slowly, perhaps in freezing temperatures, in their own filth, to a fate that many of them could not even grasp until the very end.

There will be none left to tell first-hand of disembarking the trains hundreds of miles from home and being forced to go “right” or “left” with one of the directions meaning death today, and the other direction meaning life in a slave camp with only a slight chance of survival.

There will be none left to tell first-hand of working in the very gas chambers that snuffed out the lives of their fellow prisoners en masse—and of the heart-wrenching guilt of knowing that working in these gas chambers might preserve their own lives just a little longer. [1: See endnote #1 in comments.] 

There will be none left.

*

Aside from the World Wars, the Holocaust is probably the most well-documented massive-scale tragedy in the entirety of human history. This is due to at least five factors:

1. The abrupt collapse of the Nazi regime at the end of World War II meant that the Nazis did not have time to destroy much of the documentation regarding their “Final Solution”. In the immediate aftermath of the Third Reich’s demise, over 1,000 tons of documentation were recovered throughout Germany. [2]

2. Numerous diaries were kept during the events—by victims, by perpetrators, by onlookers, and by those who helped the victims—and many of these diaries were preserved and later published or made available to researchers.

3. Many Holocaust-related memoirs were written and published in the years following the Holocaust.

4. The Nuremberg Trials and the Nuremberg Military Tribunals resulted in hundreds of hours of sworn testimony from all sides of the tragedy as well as over one million pages of documentation. [3]

5. In the decades since the Holocaust, volumes and volumes of research-based books about the Holocaust have been produced by historians, professors, journalists, and others.

In short, “what is known” about the Holocaust is awesome in its breadth and depth.

*

Yet, when it comes down to us—the non-historians, the non-academics, the non-experts—for the vast majority of us, our knowledge of the Holocaust is superficial at best. “What is known” by us as individuals is miniscule compared with “what is known” by those who do the research and write about it.

For example, we all know about Auschwitz; but how much do we know about the subsection of Auschwitz called Birkenau (a.k.a. “Auschwitz II”) and the morbid relationship between the purpose of Auschwitz and the purpose of Birkenau?

Or: We all know about the gas chambers; but how much do we know about the Einsatzgruppen (special operations units)—the SS killing squads that traveled from village to village in Eastern Europe, systematically mass-murdering most or all of the Jews in each village? This was part I of the Final Solution, and it was only after months of this process that the Nazis decided they needed a more efficient and less traumatic (for the perpetrators) and less public way of killing. Thus, the gas chambers and crematoria were born only after hundreds of thousands of Jews had already been murdered in their own villages, towns, and cities by the Einsatzgruppen and its henchmen. And even once the gas chambers and crematoria were put into operation, the Einsatzgruppen kept working. In all, of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, fully 1.5 million were killed by the Einsatzgruppen.

Or: We all know about the liberations of the Nazi concentration camps in 1945; but how much do we know about the Displaced Persons camps (“DP camps”) that housed many of the freed survivors for the next several years? Repatriation was difficult. These survivors had lost most or all of their possessions, and many of them had lost their families. In addition, their bodies and spirits had been ravaged by months or years of any or all of the following to extreme levels: malnourishment, slave labor, exposure to the elements, exposure to communicable diseases, and continuous terror. According to John Guzlowski [4]:

After liberation, the repatriation of the refugees took a long time. There were about 12 million refugees (Jews, Poles, Russians, Italians, Gypsies...) in Germany after the collapse of the Nazis. They lived in DP camps and some were still there as late as 1952.

*

It is often said of the Holocaust that “We must never forget.” Of course that is true, but I would take it a step further: To simply remember is not enough—we must also strive, as individuals, to increase our learning about and understanding of the Holocaust.

So today I begin what I call the Holocaust Reading Project.

I resolve to read several books about the Holocaust this month (April 2010) in observance of National Holocaust Month. And I will blog about those books here on Open Salon. In fact, this month my blog will be devoted exclusively to books about the Holocaust. I hope to read and blog about at least 10 Holocaust-related books during April. [5]

I invite you to join me in any of the following ways:

1. You can commit to reading at least one book about the Holocaust this month. If you’d like to get my Holocaust book suggestions throughout this month, feel free to “favorite” my blog now and then un-“favorite” it at the end of the month. I promise I will not take your eventual un-favoriting personally.

2. You can join the Facebook group I have just set up called “I will read one book about the Holocaust in April 2010”.

3. You can recommend a Holocaust-related book in a comment to this post.

4. You can participate in this Open call in observance of National Holocaust Month: Anytime during April of 2010, if you post an entry related to the Holocaust, please begin the post-title with “OC / Holocaust: ” (or, if that is too long, perhaps "OC / NHM: ") and send me a PM. I cannot promise to take the time to compile periodic round-ups of all or some of these Holocaust posts, but if I can I will.

*

Certainly, to remember is important. Candlelight vigils, public moments of silence, out-loud readings of victims’ names—these are important ways for us to honor the victims of the Holocaust.

But perhaps we can do something more this month, and push the boundaries of what we (as individuals) know about the event and how we understand it.

My hope is that by the end of April 2010, both you and I can answer “yes” to this question: Do I have a better understanding of the Holocaust now than I did a month ago?