Holocaust remembrance brings painful memories, lessons for today

Of the 1.4 million Jews, Poles, Soviets and others sent to the Auschwitz concentration camps, 1.1 million died.

Lola Borkowska survived. Twelve years old when the war started, she also survived Ravensbruck, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. She was liberated in Bergen-Belsen on April 25, 1945, by the British army.

Her future husband, Rubin Zychilinsky, also survived. Sent to forced labor camps in occupied Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Germany, he somehow escaped to Czechoslovakia.

ExploreThe Holocaust survival story of Sandy Springs' Ilse Eichner Reiner

Seventy-six years ago, on Jan. 27, 1945, the prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau were liberated by the Soviet army. That date, Jan. 27, has been named by the United Nations as Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day when the U.N. “urges every member state to honor the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism and to develop educational programs to help prevent future genocides.”

But not everyone chooses to remember.

During the siege of the U.S. Capitol, some of those who forced their way into the seat of democracy could be seen sporting Nazi regalia, including an individual wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt, with the slogan “Arbeit macht frei.”

Those words, meaning “Work makes one free,” were printed on a 16-foot sign over the main gate which greeted prisoners as they arrived at Auschwitz. Most of those arriving prisoners would be gassed immediately.

“It’s hard to believe somebody would wear something of such hatred on their shirts,” said Karen Lanksy Edlin, Rubin and Lola’s daughter.

“It proves we need to keep at it,” she said.

She’s keeping at it. Atlantans Karen Edlin and her husband Andrew Edlin are co-chairs of a Southeastern virtual event, sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

During the online event, called “What You Do Matters,” supporters of the museum will join together for “reflection and action,” to hear the lessons of the Holocaust and to contemplate how those lessons apply to today’s parlous times.

Lola and Rubin Lansky (he was given the name Lansky when he came through Ellis Island in the 1940s) had a hand in planning the Holocaust museum, and he and Lola were there the day it opened. Both have since passed away.

“The critical lessons of the Holocaust — lessons about the fragility of freedom, the nature of hate and the consequences of indifference — remain vital,” said Robert Tanen, the museum’s Southeast regional director, in a statement.

Credit: Edlin family

Credit: Edlin family

Access to the Feb. 11 streaming event is by $118 ticket. It will feature recorded messages from Morgan Freeman, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jason Alexander, former NBA all-star Ray Allen and others.

Another event, taking place on Jan. 27, will bring us the voices of some of the war’s youngest victims.

More than 1 million Jewish children were killed during the Holocaust; countless others survived. Some, like Anne Frank, kept diaries.

On Jan. 27 a group of 18 actors, performers and others will read excerpts from those diaries, in a streaming event that begins at 8 p.m. Readers will include Mayim Bialik (“The Big Bang Theory”), Mandy Gonzalez (“In the Heights”), singer-songwriter Daniel Kahn and 15 others.

The event, called “18 Voices: A Liberation Day Reading Of Young Writers’ Diaries From The Holocaust,” is sponsored by the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, with the help of member organizations, including the Breman Museum in Atlanta.

The New York museum writes of those children: “We will commemorate their suffering and learn from their courageous and resilient spirits.”

Leslie Gordon, executive director of the Breman Museum, said the stories come from a collection called “Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust.”

Said Gordon, “the stories in there, it rips your heart out, these children living through this hell.”

The recent spike in anti-Semitism, typified by the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, has made the day of remembrance more significant for many observers.

The Edlins traveled to Newnan back in 2018 to observe a rally by a neo-Nazi group called the National Socialist Movement. While 700 police officers prepared to deal with a promised crowd of 50-100 Nazis, only about two dozen arrived for the rally, to be faced with more than 100 counter-protestors.

“Andy and I went down there, and it was interesting to watch the crowds and watch the people that were marching,” said Karen Edlin. “A lot of them were really young people. I don’t know that they really understood that they were wearing messages of hate.”

Andrew Edlin said recent surveys of young people 18 to 35 years old demonstrated that fewer than half could name a single concentration camp.

Teaching those who are willing to learn is a part of the solution, said the couple. To help accomplish that task, the Edlins have been long-time supporters of the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“No matter what we say, hatred is a learned behavior,” said Karen. “Nobody is born knowing how to hate.” Helping people learn the opposite is a goal of Remembrance Day.

“We need to keep educating people,” she said. “There are still people out there who say it didn’t happen. Education is the key.”