On Our First Holocaust Survivors Day

We are living today in a world of division.

Politics is angrily polarized, foreign relations are increasingly confrontational, gun violence is frighteningly endemic, and ethnic animus is surging, including violence against Asian Americans, new and awful antisemitism, and our country’s unresolved history of racial oppression.

We need people who can teach us how not to hate.

The good news is that we have some 400,000 of them: the Holocaust survivors who are still with us.

Today is the first-ever Holocaust Survivors Day. It is a day of celebration, first proposed several months ago by Michael Berenbaum, a professor of Jewish studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, and Jonathan Ornstein, founding executive director of JCC Krakow. “Holocaust survivors deserve a day of joy; a day of celebration,” they wrote. “Not a day to share with condemnation of the Nazis, but a day to celebrate their lives they built in response to the Holocaust. Survivors represent the best in all of us, the best of the human spirit.” More than 60 organizations worldwide are joining in these festivities.

I see today as an opportunity not only to honor survivors, but to thank them. For more than 75 years, they have been doing the hard work of bearing witness, sharing wisdom, and teaching us how to transcend hatred and display the power of love.

For more than 75 years, they have been doing the hard work of bearing witness, sharing wisdom, and teaching us how to transcend hatred and display the power of love.

They are the ones who teach us how not to hate.

These men and women experienced the worst evils of the 20th century. And yet in my 25 years as a scholar of genocide, in thousands of conversations with survivors, I can’t recall a single one using the memory of their experience to hate. Instead, they live their lives with dignity and respect. They’ve turned the horrors they experienced into a profound commitment to share their stories and build understanding among the younger generations.

We celebrate them not for surviving; we celebrate them for their humility, their resilience, and their generosity.

When I ran the United Kingdom’s National Holocaust Museum and Center many years ago, we hosted an event on how to confront antisemitism. “We need an army of volunteers,” someone said. “We need to go into schools, talk to children, change their minds.” I knew we already had that army: Holocaust survivors. And as a group, they met the challenge, going and speaking with thousands of children daily. They have made a difference to an entire generation.

Just a few days ago, I met a survivor in San Diego named Dr. Edith Eva Eger. She is 93 years old, and a practicing psychologist and prolific author. When I went to visit her, she couldn’t meet until noon—she had patients in the morning. She made us lunch, breaded chicken and salad, followed by chocolate ice cream for dessert. (She was most excited about the ice cream.) And we talked.

Born in Hungary, she survived Gunskirchen, a subcamp of Mauthausen in Austria. When the U.S. Army liberated the camp, she was left alive on a pile of corpses. An American G.I. walking by saw her finger move and picked her up. He was the first Black man she’d ever seen.

Today, she gives back—in her work, and in her life. While we ate lunch, a neighbor with cancer, a Hungarian woman significantly younger than her, stopped by. Edie, at 93, is a friend when in need. She reminds me, “Love is not what you feel, it is what you do.”

Holocaust survivors are ordinary people, but they are living extraordinary lives. Only the last generation of survivors is still with us, but they are vibrant, they are engaged, and they still have much to teach us.

On this Holocaust Survivors Day, let’s not treat these remarkable people as artifacts of the past, or as superheroes who did the impossible. Let us instead invite them into our homes, invite them into our communities, give them the support they need when they need it. Let us also heed their guidance, and let us follow their example to help us surmount our polarized times and renewed scourge of antisemitism.

Let us celebrate Holocaust survivors today, let us thank them, and let us walk in their footsteps. They have taught us how to live our best lives, in spite of everything.

Stephen D. Smith is Finci-Viterbi executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation. The first episode of “The Memory Generation” was released on April 15, 2021, and can be found here: https://www.memorygenerationpodcast.com/episodes