Holocaust survivor Shefi warns: Memory must not fade!
Holocaust survivor Shefi warns: Memory must not fade!
George Shefi, a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor, has warned in Potsdam against the crime of the Nazis. When he visited the synagogue in the city center, he emphasized the responsibility of today's generations to keep the memories of the horror of the Holocaust alive. In recent years, Shefi has visited Brandenburg several times to speak to school classes about his impressive life story and encourage young people to actively work against fascism and anti -Semitism. His regular visits are a reminder that does not remember as a burden, but to be regarded as a duty to learn from history. Tagesspiegel reports that Shefi has already been awarded the regional order.
Sheefi was born in Berlin in 1931 and experienced the terrible events of the November pogroms in 1938, also known as crystal night, in which dozens of people were killed and hundreds of synagogues in Germany were destroyed. The memories of this are still alive for him; As a child, he saw the destruction of Jewish business and the foreign graffiti that defaced the walls of his neighborhood. His fate took a dramatic turn when his mother sent him to a child transport to England - a plan to save him from the danger. These transports were supported by Jewish communities in Germany and enabled around 10,000 Jewish children to leave Germany. BBC documents the experiences of Shefi, who said goodbye to his mother at the Friedrichstrasse station, without knowing that this was the last time would he saw her.
The formative experiences
The persecution of his family was not without fatal consequences. Shefi's mother was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943 and murdered there. In England he initially grew up with foster families, a difficult chapter, as there was often a lack of supervision and some children reported abuse. Despite these challenges, Shefi managed to start her own family and soon emigrate to Israel. There he continues to campaign for the preservation of the memory of the Holocaust and even developed a tradition to take a photo in the place every time he visited Berlin.
a call to responsible
In his meeting with Brandenburg's Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke (SPD) on Tuesday, Shefi again underlined his message: "We have to get the memory." At a time when the number of the still living Holocaust survivors decreases steadily, the call for education and education is getting louder. According to a survey by the Jewish Claims Conference, around 245,000 survivors worldwide still lived in early 2024, many of which are located in Israel and the USA. In Germany it was around 14,200 at that time, including many over 91 years old. The distance at the Nazi era grows among younger generations, which are increasingly less contact with contemporary witnesses.
In research, it becomes clear that the responsibility for the preservation of memories is based on new shoulders. The digital culture of remembrance is gaining in importance. Projects such as the "Arolsen Archives" digitize millions of documents on the history of Nazi persecution and are a resource for learning and understanding the past. Historians realize that the traditional role of contemporary witnesses in memorial sites is no longer the same as a few decades ago. Future generations will be dependent on documents and archive materials to understand the injustice and suffering. Deutschlandfunk Kultur emphasizes that despite the digital possibilities there is an interest in their own history in many German families, which, however, often do not address the perpetrators and their role in history.
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| Ort | Potsdam, Deutschland |
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