Our memory of the Holocaust is growing dimmer with time as the number of Holocaust...
I taught a course on the Holocaust at the University of the Incarnate Word before retiring last May after 33 years.On the first day of class I would ask, “What do you know about the Holocaust?” The answers were usually, “Hitler, Auschwitz, Anne Frank.”Our memory of the Holocaust is growing dimmer with time as the number of Holocaust survivors shrinks every day. Holocaust awareness is receding.
One of the most infamous sites was Dachau concentration camp, 10 miles outside Munich. It opened 89 years ago this month, less than two months into Adolf Hitler’s reign. In the early days, Dachau held primarily political prisoners. In time, the whole range of Nazi victims were sent to Dachau — Jews, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals, Communists and others. Dachau also held more than 2,700 Christian clergy, 95 percent of them Catholic.
I remember, too, my first visit to Treblinka, in Poland, where 925,000 were exterminated in 16 months. I was with a human rights group — students and university faculty, mostly.