Fiona Harari

Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) is commemorated each year on the 27th January, because that is the day of the liberation of the Nazi extermination and concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945. As it says on the HMD website:

Holocaust Memorial Day is the day for everyone to remember the millions of people murdered in the Holocaust, under Nazi Persecution, and in the genocides which followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur.

The theme for HMD 2019, Torn from home, encourages audiences to reflect on how the enforced loss of a safe place to call ‘home’ is part of the trauma faced by anyone experiencing persecution and genocide. ‘Home’ usually means a place of safety, comfort and security. On HMD 2019 we will reflect on what happens when individuals, families and communities are driven out of, or wrenched from their homes, because of persecution or the threat of genocide, alongside the continuing difficulties survivors face as they try to find and build new homes when the genocide is over.

We Are Here, Talking with Australia's Oldest Holocaust Survivors is, as its title suggests a collection of interviews with Holocaust survivors who were adults at the time. For Holocaust Memorial Day, I am going to share just one story from this remarkable collection of interviews.

The people interviewed in this book are part of an increasingly rare demographic: survivors of Nazism who have adult memories of the Holocaust. Born in 1926 or earlier, they were at least eighteen when the war ended. Percentage-wise, the war consumed a small fraction of their lives. But its legacy endures in their memories, their outlooks, and increasingly in their dreams. (p.7)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/01/27/we-are-here-talking-with-australias-oldest-h...… (más)