On International Holocaust Remembrance Daythis 92-year-old survivor said it was a special but gloomy occasion for him.
“It’s kind of a party and the fact that those of us who survived it were able to build a nice life for ourselves and get on with it,” Ben Lesser told CBS News on Wednesday in a Zoom video call. .
“But of course we shouldn’t forget our dear departed ones,” he said.
Wednesday was 76 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp. Lesser knew the atrocities there.
He said he survived the work and extermination camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau, Poland, two death marches and the infamous Dachau death train – where dozens of train wagons carried the corpses of thousands of prisoners to Dachau by the end of World War II. . Lesser is believed to be the last known survivor of the latter.
During the attack on the Capitol on January 6 some rioters were carrying Sweatshirts from “Camp Auschwitz” and keeping white supremacy signs.
“It gave me a taste of the past when I was a young boy,” he told CBS News, recalling the attack on the Capitol.
The recent images – combined with years of increasing anti-Semitic attacks – does not make Lesser “happy with the current state of affairs”. However, Lesser, who is the founder of the Zachor Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, has spent his time helping future generations understand the scale of the Holocaust as a way to combat hatred. He often lectures in Germany and even developed a curriculum for schools.
“I tell people that education is very important because only when you are really knowledgeable can you realize that we are all the same,” he said. ‘They are all part of humanity. God created all of us. So why can’t we live side by side and appreciate our differences, instead of hating them? ‘
“Hitler and the Nazis did not start killing,” he said. “It all started with hate.”
A questionnaire unveiled in 2020 showed that more than 60% of Millennial and Gen Z respondents were unaware that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. While Lesser acknowledged there can always be anti-Semitism in the US, he said his main concern is “what’s going to happen after the survivors disappear?”
“Who is going to speak and teach these children to let future generations know that there was a Holocaust and how it happened and how bad it was,” he said.
“When I see that, when most kids don’t even know what the word Holocaust means, it bothers me,” he said. ‘And that has to change. So we’re doing our best to change that. ‘