how to keep the memory of the Shoah alive?

This Friday in November, attention is high in the first class of the Catholic vocational high school L’Initiative, in Paris. Since September, with their English teacher, Muriel Guedj, the students have watched the films The survivors of Sobibor, Schindler’s List, then visited the Shoah Memorial in Paris and the Drancy internment camp (Seine-Saint-Denis). They are preparing for a trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland.

Silence, listening, a few targeted questions: everything shows that they have already integrated precise points of reference on the Shoah, the planned death on an industrial scale of nearly six million Jews. Their trip will take place just before the commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, on January 27, 1945, by the Red Army. By its size, this concentration and extermination camp became the symbol of the Nazi concentration camp universe. 1.1 million people were murdered there, 90% of them Jews, as well as gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and political prisoners…

Ceremonies are planned, in the presence of numerous heads of state and government and representatives of international institutions. Without the Russians, given the war in Ukraine. Piotr MA Cywinski, director of the site’s state museum, created in 1947, estimates that there are “around forty” survivors, almost centenarians, who are also expected. This will be the last major anniversary in which direct witnesses of the Shoah will participate.

This prospect does not trouble him: “These survivors have left us plenty of testimonies so that we do not forget. Our responsibility is to transmit. » This is how Piotr Cywinski has just published a work in which he highlights the daily experience and feelings of the deportees, after having gone through hundreds of museum archives, particularly in Polish, untranslated until then.

From archives to holograms, testimonies of the Shoah in the digital age

Like his, many institutions collect stories about the Shoah. Thus, the USC Shoah Foundation of director Steven Spielberg, in the United States, has recorded 55,000 testimonies around the world since 1994. It has even been testing, since 2017, in the state of Illinois, holograms of survivors who respond to the public thanks to artificial intelligence powered by these archived contributions!

In France, “we have been offering camp survivors the opportunity to record their stories for twenty-five years,” explains Lior Lalieu, head of the “Voice of Witnesses” program at the Shoah Memorial. We have 1,000 very intense videos, freely available on our site, and we are now collecting the stories of hidden children. » Since December, some have been posted on YouTube: “This gives them enormous visibility, reaching a wider audience,” she already notes.

“Nothing replaces the extraordinary dimension of a personal trajectory,” adds Denis Peschanski, specialist in the history of the camps in France and who works on memory. “The emotional impact on the listener is incredible. Everyone asks themselves: “How could he or she survive? Have the courage to resist, to escape?” and the next question is inevitably: “How would I have reacted in his place?” »

The historian remembers that at the request of the Paris prefecture, he had set up, a few years ago, a program where deportees came to speak to young recruits from the police. “When they heard that it was French police officers who had rounded up the entire family of the person standing in front of them, a reflection on their future responsibilities began. »

“The disappearance of direct witnesses is an inexorable step for any memory,” adds Sophie Nagiscarde, director of cultural affairs at the Shoah Memorial. As with the centenary of the First World War, this turning point raises questions in families. » Which brings to light buried archives, like this precious story by Alter Fajnzylberg discovered by his son Roger in a shoebox in 1991, and which he decided, in the face of his own son’s questions, to have translated and publish this year.

“The third generation is the one who lifts the veil on memories so terrible that we did not want, could not, tell them to our children. A phenomenon known among traumatized people,” underlines Denis Peschanski.

The power of places to transmit memory to future generations

Thus, the torch of memory already rests on the following generations. “All those who have ever listened to a survivor become witnesses of witnesses and will bear the burden of transmitting,” insists the chief rabbi of France, Haïm Korsia.

However, he admits his difficulty in imagining the future, having taken groups to Auschwitz since 2002, accompanied by religious leaders from all monotheist faiths and a survivor. This year again, Esther Sénot, 97 years old, was with the adolescents who confronted “the evidence of experience” as he wrote in a commemorative album.

Because to fight against forgetting or misinformation, Haïm Korsia also believes in the power of places. Here, he feels “this sidereal void, this infinite sadness. At Auschwitz, there are no graves, but the entire camp is one gigantic grave. Beyond the survivors, we are all survivors of this holocaust. »

He intends to convey this message during visits which always begin with reading the Bible at the city’s synagogue – Oswiecim –, located in the center of the complex: “What a victory to be here today! » Teachers also testify to this: even without former deportees, visiting the camps is an essential milestone in transmitting the memory of the Shoah.

Muriel Guedj, who is making her eighth trip with high school students this year, believes she has very rarely been confronted with reactions of indifference or rejection. “And it’s the Arab-Muslim kids who thank me the most upon returning from Poland. They tell me that they learned a lot,” remarks the professor, herself of Jewish faith.

Observing its 1.8 million visitors per year, Piotr Cywinski appreciates that “historical knowledge has progressed over the past thirty years. The students are better prepared, as are the teachers. »

Knowledge also nourished by the development, over the past twenty years, of memorials in several European countries. In France, we have been explaining the role of internment camps in Rivesaltes (Pyrénées-Orientales) since 2015, or transit camps in Drancy since 2012.