The farther away from the Shoah the stronger our commitment

Roberto Cetera
from Jerusalem

The imposing building on the western slope of Mount Herzl does not clash with the gentleness of the trees that form what is called ‘the Jerusalem Forest’. Yad Vashem is much more than a museum. It is also a historical archive, a library and a research and study institute dedicated to the Shoah. It is sacred for Israeli Jews, many of whom associate it with their forefathers’ arrival in Israel after escaping from the horrors of the Holocaust. To some extent it is therefore a sign of the founding of the new state. It is the most visited site in Israel after the Wailing Wall, and its Chairman, Dani Dayan, is a well-known and esteemed figure in the country. “Obviously 2025 is a very important year in Holocaust Remembrance”, he said, as 27 January marks the 80th anniversary of “the liberation of many camps, including Auschwitz”. The central activity for this commemoration took place on-site in Auschwitz; Dayan was also present at the ceremony, leading a Yad Vashem delegation. He explained that “one of the important things that [Israel] will do in the framework of the 80th anniversary is to assume the presidency of ihra, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, from March 2025 to March 2026”. With Dayan as the Chairman of ihra during that period, many of their activities throughout the year “will be dedicated to commemorating the anniversary”, because, he explained, Holocaust Remembrance should take place 365 days a year. Speaking about the importance of remembrance, Dayan explained that it is “important to understand that for the Jewish people, the liberation was not a happy event. It came too late”. When they were liberated, “survivors found themselves devastated, free but devastated, free but weak... They lost everything: family, property, everything”.

Asked how many survivors are still alive, he said “it’s difficult to say”, as “it’s also a question of defining ‘survivors’”, but they estimate that “in Israel there are around 125,000 survivors, the same number outside of Israel”. He added that “thanks to the growth in life expectancy, some of them are over 100 years old. But unfortunately, the number is decreasing very rapidly” and the youngest ones are at least 80 years old.

Dayan also described the central ceremony for Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem. “There are six torchbearers” — to represent the six million who were killed — “and all of them are survivors... This year we had only 75. So the number is dwindling rapidly. We are approaching what we refer to as the crossroads of generations. We will be, unfortunately but inevitably... in a world devoid of witnesses, of actual witnesses. Even now most of the witnesses were children... That will be a dramatic change in Holocaust Remembrance, because I think that the formative experience — for sure in Israel, but I think also outside of Israel — in Holocaust Remembrance was to listen to a survivor. Survivors are basically the only existing bridge” between the horrors of extermination camps and younger generations. Losing these voices, Dayan said, will make it more difficult to combat Shoah denial and distortion.

Asked then about his impressions of remembrance among younger generations, Dayan explained that there are two problems. “One is ignorance and the other is bigotry. When you refer to anti-Semitism and to the Shoah, denial and distortion sometimes stem from hatred, sometimes from ignorance. We [as an institution] can cure the ignorance. It’s much more difficult to cure the hatred”. He noted that worldwide, interest in the Shoah “is actually increasing”. To cite just one example, he pointed out that International Holocaust Remembrance Day did not even exist in the 20th century, nor did the various conferences dedicated to the topic. “Denial of the Holocaust was much more prevalent in the 20th century than now”, he said, adding that the more serious problem today is “distortion of the Holocaust”. According to Dayan, the turning point that led to a better understanding of the dimensions of Holocaust crimes was the 1961 Eichmann Trial.

As for forms of Shoah distortion, Dayan said some countries continue to deny that they had any Nazi collaborators. “Which is of course a fallacy”, he stressed. Another form of distortion is using the Holocaust for propaganda purposes. “We saw it in the Russian-Ukrainian war”, he noted.

Dayan spoke more broadly about the topic of distortion during a private audience with Pope Francis. “He said that the Catholic Church is not afraid of history. A very important statement, meaning research, objectively and without constraints”. Dayan recalls their conversation fondly, saying it was even more pleasant given that both he and the Pope are from Argentina.

During the interview, Dayan also explained why Remembrance Day in Israel is not held on 27 January but on a different date every year. “Israel decided at a very very early stage to mark Yom HaShoah, in Hebrew, [on] a day that is close to the [out]break of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And the world, the international community, decided much later, in the 21st century, to mark it on January 27th, which is the day of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau”.

As for upcoming events and intergenerational projects at Yad Vashem, Dayan spoke of a new area of Yad Vashem called “the Valley of Communities”, inspired by a famous quote by Shoah survivor Abel Herzberg. “He once said that the Shoah is not the murder of six million Jews; it’s rather six million murders of one Jew each”, Dayan said. “We try to give back the personality to each one of the six million... but there are also the Jewish communities, thousands of Jewish communities that virtually disappeared”. Yad Vashem is completing an educational centre that will teach people about the Jewish community. “I think that other ethnic groups don’t have something so close-knit that takes you from birth to death and embraces you from birth to death”. Other new projects include opening a theatre in Yad Vashem and educational centres around Israel and in other parts of the world. “In my visit to Germany in January 2022, I met the Chancellor Olaf Scholz and I suggested to him that we open the first educational centre of Yad Vashem outside of Israel, in Germany, in the land of the perpetrators”.