I was surprised to open up my local paper yesterday and find the headline “New report says 70% of Holocaust survivors will be gone in next 10 years.” It was not the data and the sobering reality presented in the article that surprised me, but its inclusion in the local press. Too often, remembering the Holocaust seems like an exclusively Jewish burden, when it should be on the shoulders of all of humanity. Too often, we are greeted with statistics about the number of Canadians who think the Holocaust was exaggerated, as a study of young Canadians revealed earlier this year.
Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. It is a uniquely Jewish day, a day observed by Jewish communities around the world with prayers, silence, lit yahrzeit (memorial) candles, and survivor testimonies. The date was set in the early days of the State of Israel, after much debate about how to properly remember and mourn the 6 million victims. The date was chosen to mark the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when a group of young Jews, confined to the Warsaw Ghetto, resisted against tyranny and hatred, and fought to save the lives of themselves and their community. The world observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January, marking the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Allied forces – a day when the world finally came to save us. Note the difference in when we choose to remember: the Jewish community lifts up a day when we exercised agency even at a time when it was being stripped from us, and the world community on a day when they can lift up the actions of the Allied forces to end the war and the genocide.
On this Yom Hashoah, I am painfully aware of the reality that my newspaper reminded me of: that the median age of Holocaust survivors today is 87. An 87 year old in 2025 was merely a year old in 1939, and their own memories of those dark years are blurry. As the survivor generation passes on in the coming years, it will be on all of us to ensure that their stories continue to be heard, within our own community and in the larger world. Organisations like Teach the Shoah are doing the holy work of preserving survivor stories and bringing them to life for a new generation.
Y’hi zichram baruch. May their memories be for a blessing.
