Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Community

Will The Holocaust Be Remembered 100 Years From Now?

It’s been 73 years since the end of the Holocaust. Most survivors are no longer here. My generation, the second generation, is getting older. We are transitioning from short term to long term memory. Indeed, the test of memory is not how we recall soon after an event, but how it is recalled long, long after.

Holocaust memory has gone through different permutations. In the early ‘80s, a second generation group of children of survivors was organized worldwide. This was certainly positive, as children raised by parents who were survivors shared common challenges of growing up in homes where father or mother, or both, had been subjected to unspeakable horrors. Members of the group served as constant reminders to the larger Jewish world and beyond that we dare not forget.

But in every positive there is a negative. Unwittingly, a message was being sent that the responsibility of memory especially lies with the second generation. Those not directly descended from survivors bore less obligation.

Today, new modalities are necessary. Most critical is the understanding that we are all survivors. If he could have, Hitler would have murdered every Jew.

Sephardim, who have felt less drawn to Holocaust memory, are also part of the equation. It is true that their forebears lived in Arab countries, where Hitler was less a threat — and, as Raul Hilberg points out, Hitler’s plan was seeded by 1,500 years of Christian, and not Muslim, anti-Semitism. Still, the Sephardi world should remember the close alliance between Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Only if all Jews feel a direct connection to the Holocaust will Holocaust memory continue long term.

The State of Israel is critical as well for Holocaust memory to endure. While Israel would have been established even if there were no Holocaust, there would, I believe have been no Holocaust if there had been an Israel.

Israel’s Law of Return declares that any Jew may be granted immediate citizenship. This was Israel’s way of declaring that never again will threatened or persecuted Jewry have no place to go.

In fact, the definition of Jewishness for Israel’s interior ministry is based on Hitler’s criteria. If it was enough to be a target of annihilation, it’s enough to be considered a citizen of the Jewish State. From this perspective, the Holocaust is meshed into the very fabric of the State of Israel.

Not coincidentally, Israel has become the only place where the six million are remembered on a broad, all-encompassing national scale. Theaters and cafes are closed the evening of Yom HaShoah. A siren rings out countrywide on the morning of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Everything comes to a stop — cars pull over, restaurants halt service, meetings come to a standstill. In a show of unparalleled national remembrance, millions pause to reflect, to memorialize.

Most important is the need to ritualize Holocaust memory. Little is remembered in Jewish history that has not been ritualized. We remember Egyptian slavery because of Passover; oppression in Persia because of Purim. If the Holocaust does not become part and parcel of Jewish ritual, it will be relegated to a footnote in Jewish history, much like the medieval Crusades and the 15th century Spanish Inquisition.

As we ritually reenact the exodus experience, we should do the same on Yom HaShoah. It is for this reason that we have created a “Haggadah for the Yom HaShoah Seder” that we conduct on every Yom HaShoah.

When reciting a personal Yizkor memorial prayer, we open with the words, “May God remember.” Recognizing that, decades from now, few if any will recall the person for whom we are reciting Yizkor, we ask God to do so.

This may be true for individuals. But the Holocaust is different. It involves six million of our people. As Menachem Begin once said, during the Holocaust our people were not decimated, but “tertiated” — it was not one in ten, but one in three that were murdered.

Such a collective national loss can never, ever be forgotten — not only by God, but each of us and our children and children’s children, until the end of time.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.