Naftali Fürst, 92, one of the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors, is returning to Auschwitz for the annual commemoration marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp. Fürst shares his harrowing first-hand account of his experience at Auschwitz in 1944, highlighting the brutality and dehumanization he witnessed. He emphasizes the importance of preserving these testimonies as a reminder of the Holocaust's horrors and the need to combat antisemitism.
“For 60 years, I didn’t talk about the Holocaust , for 60 years I didn’t speak a word of German even though it’s my mother tongue."Naftali Fürst will never forget his first view of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, on Nov. 3, 1944. He was 12 years old.
In 2005, he was invited to attend the ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald, where he was liberated on April 11, 1945, after being moved there from Auschwitz. He realized there were fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors who could give first-person accounts, and decided to throw himself into memorial work. This will be his fourth trip to a ceremony at Auschwitz, having also met Pope Francis there in 2016.
“We had to prove our desire to live, to do another step and another step and keep going,” he said. Many people gave up, longing to end the hunger and thirst and cold, and just sat down, where they were shot by the guards. On Oct. 7, 2023, Fürst awoke to the Hamas attack on southern Israel, and immediately thought of his granddaughter, Mika Peleg, and her husband, and their 2-year-old son, who live in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz on the border with Gaza where scores of people were killed or kidnapped.
HOLOCAUST AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR LIBERATION INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY ANTISEMITISM
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