Remember those who saved us, say Holocaust survivors

With only 22 Holocaust survivors left in South Africa, it was all the more poignant to gather together to celebrate their lives and how far they had come since their childhood.

On 4 June, 10 Holocaust survivors ranging from 81 to 97 years old, as well as volunteers from the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and Chevrah Kadisha, gathered at the Three Roses Cafe in Sandringham to celebrate International Holocaust Survivors Day. It was the first time this event has been celebrated in South Africa.

Started four years ago by the Jewish Community Centre of Kraków, International Holocaust Survivors Day calls on people across the globe to celebrate the resilience, heroism, and strength of Holocaust survivors.

“There was always Yom HaShoah, but there was never a Survivors Day,” said Tali Nates, the director of the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre. “A few years ago, we gathered around the world, and said, ‘Wait a minute, what about your life after the Shoah? What about resilience after the Shoah? What about the families that you built after the Shoah? We cannot just remember those terrible years, we have also to remember your achievements and the fullness of your life.’”

“We survivors are of different categories,” said 90-year-old Holocaust survivor Lyonell Fliss, “but all of us have a duty to preserve the memories of the Holocaust. But we won’t live forever. We have to pass on this terrible experience to the next generation and to make it do the same thing to the third generation, and forever, to make sure that what happened in the Holocaust never happens again. This should be our mission.”

He said though everyone was gathered to celebrate the lives of survivors, it was also important to recognise the sacrifice made by those who risked their lives to save Jews. The only reason he had survived, he said was the kindness of others, and so, on this day, we should also celebrate them.

“I’m not a hero,” Fliss said, “But I survived, and many of us survived due to the heroism of others who saved our lives, our family’s lives, even the lives of people who later passed. These were the real heroes of the Holocaust. They came to save lives at the cost of their own lives.

“As in my case, it wasn’t Jews like the Warsaw Ghetto fighters who saved our lives, but rather Christians. In my case, there were even unknown people who risked or sacrificed their lives to save Jewish lives.”

Reverend Joseph Matzner, who was born in 1935 and survived the Holocaust by being hidden in convents, said that though he had survived the worst atrocity in the history of mankind, his heart broke over what was happening in Israel, as well as the alarming rise of antisemitism.

“It’s depressing. I dare say that the Shoah will never be forgotten. We have no fear of that as long as the Jewish people and Israel are being demonised, defiled, and so many wars are caused by an ungrateful world.”

Helene Sieff said that many survivors like herself were too young to remember those who risked their lives to save them, but she still tried to honour their memory in any way she could. Sieff was born in Belgium and survived in hiding, moving from place to place as a little girl until March 1943, when she moved to the home of a widow who treated her as one of her children.

“I planted a tree for my foster mother. I got her two gold medals for saving me,” she said. “We were too young at my age to know what was fully happening, yet these people risked everything to save us.”

There was a sense of gratitude among most of the survivors present, not only that they were able to survive the Holocaust because of the kindness of others, but because they had been able to live full and happy lives despite what happened in their childhoods.