27 January 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp in what was German-occupied Poland.
A solemn milestone that demands reflection on humanity’s ability to learn from its darkest moments. When Allied forces uncovered the horrors of the Holocaust in 1945, the world stood at a moral crossroads. It was a moment of clarity, with the global community of nations vowing never to let such atrocities happen again.
Auschwitz: Echoes of Genocide
Over 1.1 million men, women, and children were killed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi concentration and extermination camp during WWII.
Established by Germans in 1940 after Oswiecem, a Polish city, was annexed to the Third Reich by the Nazis, Auschwitz has become a symbol of terror, genocide, and the Shoah. Almost a million were Jews, 70,000 were Polish prisoners, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and an unknown number of gay men. This was one of six death camps the Nazis built in occupied Poland in 1942, and it was by far the biggest.
The director of the Auschwitz Museum, Piotr Cywinski, issued a plea to protect the memory of what had happened as the survivors died out.
“Memory hurts, memory helps, memory guides… Without memory, you have no history, no experience, no point of reference,” he said, as survivors listened on, many of them wearing blue-and-white striped scarves to symbolize prisoners’ clothing.
In the aftermath of World War II, the establishment of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reflected a global determination to uphold dignity and justice for all. However, the persistence of genocide and human rights violations underscores the gap between ideals and reality. Time and again since 1945, humanity has failed to live up to its promise of “never again,” as atrocities expose the inadequacies of the international systems meant to prevent them.
Post-War Europe Confronts the Horrors of Auschwitz
Newsreel filmed by the Allies after the liberation of Europe shows German civilians being forced to visit the camps by the troops.
“It was only a short walk from any German city to the nearest concentration camp,” says the American voice-over. The camera catches relaxed, smartly dressed Germans laughing and chatting as they make their way.
They walk past the corpses, piles of emaciated men and women, men and women who may even have been their neighbors, colleagues, and friends in the past. The camera that had captured their relaxed, easy smiles before they entered the camps now records their horror. Shock registers on their faces. Some weep. Others shake their heads, fold handkerchiefs to their faces, and look away.
When we talk of industrialized killing, we don’t just mean the scale of it, vast though it was. We also mean the sophistication of its organization: the division of labor, the allocation of specialist tasks, the efficient marshaling of resources, and the meticulous planning that was needed to keep the wheels of the killing machine turning.
Holocaust Memory Fades as Europe Moves Forward
For years after the war, public attention turned away from this question, but also away from trying to understand the question of what had happened more broadly.
Though some Nazi war criminals were prosecuted, the new priority, in a Europe divided by the Cold War, was to turn West Germany into a democratic Ally.
The Holocaust almost disappeared from popular memory in much of the Western world. The post-war public wanted to turn the page on the war. In popular culture, in Britain, for example, the appetite was for stories that could be celebrated and cheered. In the stories that the survivors wanted to tell, there was very little heroism to be found in a story where they’ve been stripped of their humanity, agency, and choice. They’d been turned into a nonperson.
Most prisoners had been forced to march west, towards Germany, in freezing winter weather. Already weakened by camp conditions, many died on the way in what came to be known as the Death Marches.
Not forgiving and not forgetting
Today, If This is a Man is regarded as a masterpiece of survivor testimony and one of the most important memoirs of the entire era. But in 1947, Primo Levi found it hard to find a publisher, even in his native Italy.
Finally, a small independent publisher in Turin published it in a print run of 2,500. It sold 1,500 copies and then disappeared. For publishers and for the public, it was still too soon. Few, it seemed, wanted to look.
“Primo Levi didn’t sell because the time wasn’t right and because he was too great a writer to give a heroic answer. His answer is greater than heroism,” says Jay Winter, professor of history emeritus at Yale University. Many of Prof. Winter’s mother’s family were killed in the Holocaust.
He adds, “A lot of people turned Primo Levi into a saint, but all you have to do is read the poem at the beginning of If This is a Man to see that he is not forgiving anybody—he is not forgiving and not forgetting.”
“There was Holocaust memorialization in the 1950s,” says Prof. David Feldman at Birkbeck University in London, “but it was something that was done by Jews themselves, in small fragmented groups.
“These were occasions of mourning more than memorialization. The idea that we have now, of memorialization, that somehow there are lessons to be drawn from the Holocaust, was not commonplace then.”.
According to Prof. Winter, “The countries that were reconstructing… needed a myth of resistance, of heroic armed conflict against the Nazis or Italian fascists.” That myth of resistance “had no place for concentration camp inmates.”.
A cultural shift in attitudes
Only in the 1960s did popular interest return. When Israeli agents captured Adolf Eichmann, a key figure in the extermination campaign, they put him on trial in Jerusalem and televised it. Now, Holocaust memorialization began to reach the wider public.
Through the Eichmann trial, the new mass medium of television brought survivors’ testimony into the living rooms of the western world.
It coincided, too, with a cultural shift in public attitudes to war. A generation born in the aftermath of World War Two was coming of age in the 1960s.
This resurgence of antisemitism is a stark reminder of how far the world has yet to go. Antisemitism is not an isolated phenomenon—it often signals broader societal intolerance. Combating it requires addressing the underlying structures of hatred and prejudice that endanger all minority groups. The free world must ask itself how it can turn a blind eye to the atrocities occurring today. In Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, and beyond, entire communities endure unchecked oppression, with women in particular facing dehumanizing conditions. As world leaders will convene in Auschwitz to commemorate 80 years since the liberation of the camp, it is time for a sincere and genuine renewed commitment to fighting hatred, antisemitism, and racism in all its forms.
The situation of Jews today is the worst it has been since the Holocaust, and the lessons of Auschwitz demand that we act—not just to protect Jewish communities but to uphold the dignity and humanity of all people. Let this milestone be a wake-up call for reflection, accountability, and meaningful change.
