IIn 1987, Chaim Herzog was the first Israeli President to visit the Federal Republic of Germany. In the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which he helped to liberate as part of the British army in 1945, he gave a speech that dashed the Germans’ hopes that the end would soon come to an end: “I bring neither forgiveness nor oblivion. The only ones who can forgive are the dead; the living have no right to forget.”
Today, 77 years after the end of the war, his warning seems more distant than ever. Because in view of the dwindling contemporary witnesses, the fight against forgetting is becoming increasingly difficult. Although the crimes of the Nazi regime are actually standard in every history lesson, not all Germans seem to have stuck with them. That’s according to a study conducted in 2018 among respondents across Europe. 40 percent of the German respondents between the ages of 18 and 34 said they knew little or nothing about the Holocaust. And they’re not alone: In the United States, 48 percent of millennials surveyed in a Claim Center study could not name a single concentration camp. Bavaria is so far the only state that makes a visit to a Nazi memorial site compulsory as part of the curriculum. Other countries merely “recommend” the visit, with the result that among the adults surveyed, just over half said they had already visited a former concentration camp. No wonder that there are such glaring gaps in knowledge, especially among young people.
Anti-Semitism on Facebook
But if regular educational offers are not effective, what other options are there? Can digital media help to keep memories alive and alive? At first glance, social media is extremely unsuitable for dealing seriously with the Holocaust. In the networks, the Holocaust is undisturbedly denied and put into perspective, the operators of the platforms often do not react to anti-Semitic content, and their algorithms often even promote it. Research by a British research group found that Facebook presented users with Holocaust-denying content when they searched for the term Holocaust. Those who spent time on such pages were shown other related groups or content. Although Facebook adjusted its hate speech policy in October 2020 to also include Holocaust denial and relativization, a simple search for the keywords “Holocaust” and “fake” still reveals abysses: “If it was extermination camps, why was there in the camps then so many babies?” and “Rothschild, Rockefeller, Kissinger, Soros – You are the real virus” are just two examples of the anti-Semitism that still rages undisturbed on Facebook. Both, according to a review by Facebook, do not violate the community guidelines.
Even if anti-Semitic content is not actively shared, the dynamics of social networks often lead to a disrespectful handling of the topic. Visitors balance on the train tracks in Auschwitz or hop around on the steles of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin. Memorials and memorials degenerate into backdrops for selfies; People smile happily for their cameras in a room filled to the ceiling with victims’ shoes. So a million people were murdered here? #sad. Comedian Shahak Shapira reacted to this with his project #Yolocaust by retouching the influencers and yoga poses into images from concentration camps.
Selfies from Auschwitz
The TikTok platform also experienced a wave of outrage in 2020 when users disguised themselves as victims of the Holocaust in a “Holocaust Challenge”, with homemade Jewish stars and injuries made up. Allegedly for “educational purposes”, as a user later claimed. The Auschwitz Memorial Foundation wrote: “We should raise awareness that not every social media activity is appropriate to commemorate the Holocaust. It always requires respect for the victims (. . .) and factual accuracy.”