As the workshop goes on, we hear some heart-rending stories from child survivors. One is from a woman now living in France, who at age 13 was urged by her parents to run away and try to survive, as they were awaiting transport to their deaths at Auschwitz. Her miraculous survival in Poland included managing to work in an office from which she watched the smokestacks at Auschwitz every day. Another survivor had been taken to Auschwitz at age 14 and was selected to live while his parents and younger brother were sent to their deaths.

These are the people who possess very real memories about the Holocaust. It would be unimaginable now to apply the questions of the academics from the prior session about whether we need to remember the Holocaust for the future. I feel a deep kinship with all of these people.

We are now encouraged by the group leaders to talk about strengths we feel we possess as survivors. I talk about the empowerment that comes from a sense of responsibility of survivors to make a difference. “We must get involved!” We must do this for those who had been silenced—to speak, to carry on their legacy. I am repeating the challenge posed by the Canadian survivor during the morning meeting. I am repeating the challenge posed by my mother.

Conclusions

Remembering the Holocaust or other great man-made disasters for the future is a holistic enterprise. It cannot be abstracted away from the victims, from those who care about the victims or those who want to carry on their legacy. Survivors and their descendents carry not only the residue of trauma, but also the visceral indignation about the perpetration of evil. This sentiment typically eludes academic analyses. The Oxford conference helped me understand that as a survivor I mustn’t be afraid to feel because feelings humanize our experiences and can clarify the importance of memories. Lack of feelings, as reflected in cold objectivity, can lead to loss of compassion and to cynicism that distances reality. We must not forget that perpetrators of genocide during the Holocaust were, often, accomplished scientists who developed and acted out clever and evil theories. They succeeded in their nefarious goals because of lack of feelings and compassion for human dignity and human life among both bystanders and perpetrators.

Yes, we need museums, memorials, and Holocaust curricula. We need psychologists to study post-traumatic stress and historians to confront Holocaust deniers. Some academics at the conference wondered if it is important to make concerted efforts to remember. From the vantage point of survivors, the reasons for remembering are simple and clearly necessary. Remembering for us relates to honoring the memories of our parents, families, and fellow humans who were murdered, and who were not given the opportunity to complete their lives. We need to remember what was done to them. We need to remember this so that future generations can learn to resist evil.

There would be a scholarly compendium dedicated to the wisdoms gleaned from the landmark conference on the Holocaust we attended in Oxford. Perhaps, the time has also come for survivors’ voices to be heard and listened to by the academic establishment. Survivors and their descendents need to participate in future efforts to remember the Holocaust as advisors, role models, and repositories of “memory,” rather than only as case histories or human specimens who survived trauma. Academics and organizers should not relegate survivors to spectator status at lectures and conferences dealing with genocide. Instead, we should have the courage to listen to survivors’ viewpoints, even when they are emotionally charged. We should offer them “expert” status, as they are witnesses to history.

Remembering involves personal time travel to the memories in question. Academic discourse typically involves abstractions, which take us outside the domain of memory. Survivors’ memories hold the key to our trauma but also to our survival. Our uncommon experiences and our survival have endowed us with keen common sense.

As time elapses, and there are fewer and fewer survivors to bring authenticity to conversation about the Holocaust, it is ever more important that we introduce human perspectives into academic dialogue. Academics and other “objective” analysts of the Holocaust and other trauma must be reminded that they cannot bring indifference to human suffering. We should not tolerate speaking about other people’s suffering without requisite emotions. Those who both feel and remember are in the best position to help build collective memories worth remembering. It is our collective responsibility to confront indifference. We must resist making collective memories into cultural artifacts removed from their historical roots. This will help not only the survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants, but all humankind.