Holocaust Remembrance Day, dedicated to preventing crimes against humanity, is a reminder of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on 27 January 1945. Auschwitz has become a symbol of the murderous persecutions by the National Socialists. With its documentation centre “Jewish Contemporary History”, the Archives of Contemporary History is the only institution in Switzerland that is systematically collecting original source material about the Holocaust, and this year it also enabled young people from grammar schools and specialised middle schools to meet three Holocaust survivors in person. This allowed them to find out at first hand what the eyewitnesses were compelled to endure in the darkest chapter of German history.

Orphans

Although Klaus Appel, born in Berlin in 1925, is accustomed to recounting the “Time of Horror” and regards it as his duty, he often struggled for words during his lecture. He lost his whole family during the period of Nazi rule, except for one uncle, who had emigrated to Palestine in time, and his sister with whom he survived in England. After a failed attempt to flee through the Netherlands, his father was taken away by the Gestapo one morning in 1937. Appel never saw him again. His brother, who was two years older, his father and other relatives were murdered in Auschwitz. His mother had already died before the Nazi dictatorship, soon after his younger sister was born.

The feeling of having a family again at last was the main reason why, after initial hesitation, he finally settled in Switzerland as a 27-year-old with his Swiss wife, whom he had got to know in London. For him, the violent loss of his family is also the main cause of the traumas from which Holocaust victims suffer and which, according to the latest discoveries, can even be handed down as far as the third generation. For example, his sister continues to live in England as she has always done, completely alone and withdrawn. He believes that she has an identity problem, which he says is a natural development resulting from losing her family at an early age.

A Dutch woman brought the fourteen-year-old Appel to Great Britain in secret together with several other children, shortly after his younger sister. This helper, whom the children called “Angel”, rented a minibus and driver to bring Jewish children away from the Nazis and to safety in Great Britain. Appel explained that, after the war, she was honoured by the Queen of the Netherlands for her work.

Not just lip-service

Daniel Gerson from the University of Basel, who moderated the event organised by the Archives of Contemporary History, explained that, after Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938, Great Britain was the only country that did not just pay lip-service but which – startled by what was happening in Germany – opened its doors to refugees. There was a willingness in Great Britain to accept an unlimited number of Jewish children. As a result, about 10,000 could be rescued before war broke out. Appel explained that their journey into a country whose language they did not speak and in which everything was foreign was not always easy. He said that no family would accommodate him because he was already fourteen years old, and he had been self-reliant from the very start.

In conversation with the young people, it became clear that Appel’s initial revulsion at everything that came out of Germany had changed. He has since come to believe that no country works as hard as Germany at coming to terms with its past. Appel said “I have learnt that although new generations cannot be made responsible for their forefathers’ atrocities, history can repeat itself.” This is also the reason why Appel tells his life story to young people in a struggle against forgetting and to keep people vigilant.

Shaping political awareness

Although Tamara Bieri and Camilla Fenonika, seventeen-year-old students from Altdorf High School, have already learned something about the Holocaust in school, they think that it is always terrifying to hear about it again and they feel shocked every time that they do. Tamara says: “I think you approach the world more openly and liberal-mindedly after you hear about things like these, and you have the courage to talk about problems.” Both students are convinced that such contacts shape their political awareness. Tamara says: “I believe it is important that we treasure these people who have experienced horrors like these, but without becoming extremists in the sense of hating Germans or being intolerant towards them.” Both think that it is important to keep alive in the minds of the general public this part of history, the Holocaust and its atrocities, and the Kindertransport that took place in connection with it. Tamara adds: “To avoid this all becoming forgotten, teaching should focus not just on dates and armies but also on the suffering that afflicted people during the Holocaust.”