Joanna Orban
Copy Editor
Edith Eva Eger was only sixteen years old when she was sent to the concentration camps. As a teenager, Eger had been hoping to join the Hungarian Olympic team as a gymnast before antisemitic laws forced her to quit. She, her sister Magda and the girls’ parents were sent to Auschwitz after living in a ghetto and a factory.
The very day Eger and her mother arrived her mother was sent to the gas chambers on the orders of Josef Mengle as a man who is more commonly known as the “Angel of Death”. Later that day, Eger was forced to dance in his quarters. He “thanked” her with a loaf of bread.
Eger and her sister survived numerous camps and death marches. After her final camp was liberated, Eger was rescued by an American soldier who according to Eger’s online biography, “noticed her hand moving slightly amongst a number of dead bodies”. After receiving medical help Eger and her sister were eventually reunited with their elder sister Clara who had remained in Budapest, safely hidden by her music teacher.
Eger, like many other Holocaust, survivors eventually immigrated to the United States. Today Eger holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and is a renowned speaker. She states on her website, “Though I could have remained a permanent victim –scarred by what was beyond my control– I made the choice to heal.”
The Holocaust was one of the most horrific events to have ever occurred in human history. An estimated ten million people are believed to have died in the Nazi death camp, six million of which were Jews. Eger is just one example of someone who survived those horrors.
This article is being published on Jan. 27, a day that is recognized worldwide as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Today is the 76th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Red Army.
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), “The purpose of International Holocaust Remembrance Day is two-fold: to serve as a date for the official commemoration of the victims of the Nazi regime and to promote Holocaust education throughout the world.” This day started by the United Nations in 2015 picks a different theme each year in order to discuss more aspects of the Holocaust. For example, the theme selected in 2011 was regarding women and their experiences during the Holocaust.
According to the USHMM, many countries around the world celebrate other kinds of remembrance days. The United States Congress established the Days of Remembrance. These dates coincide with Yom HaShoah, Israel’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Days, and fall on April 8 and 9 of this year.
Although the U.S. commemorates many Holocaust Remembrance Days, some people remain unaware or have misinformation. According to a 2018 article published by The New York Times, “Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was.” These numbers come from a survey published on International Holocaust Remembrance Day of 2018. This number is understandably troubling to Holocaust survivors, educators and others from all over the world.
This year, perhaps more than ever it is especially important to remember the Holocaust. A few weeks ago, the US Capitol building was stormed by far-right rioters. Many of these rioters, who among other vulgar hate symbols, were seen holding a Kek flag, which is directly inspired by the Nazi swastika, as well as other symbols widely associated with Neo-Nazism including Camp Auchswitz sweatshirts and stickers from American Neo-Nazi organizations.
Neo-Nazism in Idaho has been a recent topic of conversation given the vandalism of the Boise-located Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial in December of last year. Stickers, depicting swastikas and the words “we are everywhere” were found placed on the statue as well as throughout the memorial.
The memorial is the only one honoring Frank in the country. Frank was a Jewish diarist who died during the Holocaust. Her diary is one of several that depict what it was like to be Jewish during World War II.
The memorial is upheld by the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights located in Boise. According to Dan Prinzing executive director of the center, as quoted by NPR, “While this defacement didn’t cause significant damage, it was the where, the how, the premeditation,” he said. “We have always felt like the heart of the community, and this was a stab in the heart.”
According to NBC, the Wassmuth Center opened the memorial in 2002. After the more recent vandalism, the Wassmuth Center issued the following statement, “This explicit act of white supremacy serves as a reminder of the stark and disturbing pervasiveness of racism, bigotry and hatred that continues to plague society.”
For those wanting to learn more about the Holocaust, impeccable resources can be found through the USHMM. The museum, although currently closed to the public, offers free videos, podcasts, photos and survivor statements on its website: ushmm.org.
Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, in what is now modern Romania. After being forced into a ghetto, Wiesel and his family were loaded into cattle cars and sent to Auschwitz. He and his father were chosen for slave labor. His mother and sister were killed. Wiesel’s experiences were documented in his memoir called “Night”. Wiesel and his father were sent on a death march to another concentration camp called Buchenwald as the allied powers approached Auschwitz. His father, although he survived the march, did not survive to see Buchenwald’s liberation. After the war Wiesel, like Egel, immigrated to the United States and was left to reconcile his experiences in the Nazi death camp like so many others.
According to the museum’s website, Wiesel was “awarded the inaugural United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Award, the Museum’s highest honor, in 2011 for the singular role he has played in establishing and advancing the cause of Holocaust remembrance.”
Wiesel once said, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
Egel and Wiesel, are just two Holocaust survivors. There are many more whose stories are not shared in this article.
