27 January 2007,
"Neues Deutschland"

"The immense grief of our hearts"

National Auschwitz Committees open up to new members and to the future

Article by Ingrid Heinisch

The International Auschwitz Committee represents all former detainees of the concentration camp. Organisations from 19 countries belong to the IAC. Some of them represent a great number of survivors, such as the committee in Israel, where 250,000 former Auschwitz detainees live today. In comparison, in Hungary their number amounts to not more than 200, and in Austria to not more than five. That's the reason why some national committees have now opened their ranks and accept as members also people affected by Auschwitz only indirectly: e.g. family members or scientists. This is the case in Germany, Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg. Other committees are planning to do the same.

But it is not these differences that mark the national committees - it is, first of all, the one thing that unites them: the common experience of the survivors. This became evident in an impressive way when Berry Nahmias and Adolf Burger recently met each other for the first time. Berry is the president of the Greek Auschwitz Committee and Adolf is a very active member in Prague. Both of them have told their stories already a hundred times, but when they are talking about it, it sounds as if it would be for the first time. And they are showing each other the numbers tatooed on the inner side of their forearms. These numbers engraved on their skin symbolise the distress of all Auschwitz detainees.

The Auschwitz committees are particularly worried about the last survivors who are more and more in need of physical and psychological assistance. In Israel they are covered by an extensive care program. In other countries the assistance is more or less inofficial. In Eastern Europe the members legitimately complain that the survivors are treated unfairly with regard to the compensation payments. Although they live in far poorer conditions they are granted only half of the amount paid to their fellows in the west.

The former concentration camp detainees are also united in their common worry for the future. Particularly now, at an advanced age, many of them go and visit schools and talk to young people about the holocaust. They also accompany groups of tourists to Auschwitz. Some of them have such encounters every week. When Adolf Burger comes to Berlin for a visit, he always wants to talk to young Germans, if possible, every day.

Kurt Goldstein, Honorary President of the International Auschwitz Committee, regularly meets young people, too. The next meeting is scheduled in Magdeburg, next Monday. The 92-years old survivor will be available to his listeners for three hours.

The survivors ask themselves what will happen when they are no longer able to raise their voices. What will then happen to the history of Auschwitz?

In all countries people who feel responsible are thinking about new forms of passing the history on to the coming generations. There are many projects to produce films with the remaining survivors. The French committee plans to offer guided virtual tours through the Auschwitz memorial site on the internet, where the visitor can pass the diffferent stations of the detainees. The Dutch committee plans a similar project. Here the visitor can ask questions concerning the life of the detaines, such as: What food did the detainees get? How were they dressed? What did the female detainees do when they had their period? – Simple questions that young people often ask. To all these questions answers from former detainees will be available.

In Berlin the International Auschwitz Committee has just opened a new exhibition entitled "Surviving in Life", with drawings and poems by the Dutch survivor Ronnie Goldstein-van Cleef. The concept of the exhibition is rather radical: no explanations concerning the concentration camp, its history and organisation, only pictures and verses. And a few texts about the life of Ronnie Goldstein-van Cleef. The drawings in black and white tell about her fear, loneliness and despair. They do not need an explanation.

All survivors are worried about the growth of anti-Semitism worldwide and the helplessness and indifference in view of this phenomenon. The Hungarians suffer from open anti-Semitism in their society. Also Polish and Russian survivors report about it. Germany's Foreign Minister Steinmeier has promised to the members of the International Auschwitz Committee that Germany will tackle this problem during the country's presidency in the European Council. The IAC will take him at his word.

And there is another aspect that gives the survivors cause to worries and grief. "No more Auschwitz, no more war!" – that was their call to the world. It has not been fulfilled. On the contrary. The International Auschwitz Committee has therefore focussed its work more and more on the presence, currently in particular on the fight against the genocide in Darfour. The French member of the IAC Presidium, Rafael Esrail, has expressed this with the following words: "Darfour – that's the imense grief of our hearts."

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