Looking back. Looking ahead. 2020-2025

134   SPEECHES | SURVIVORS AND LIBERATORS Survivors and Liberators honouring the seven mothers and their children was creat- ed, thanks to the dedication and effort of Dr Sabine Schalm and Eva Gruberova in close cooperation with the staff at the Dachau Memorial. The title of that exhibition was They Gave Us Hope . Five of the seven “babies” reunited for the first time at that event after 65 years! The seven pregnant mothers were called the “Schwanger Commando” (“Pregnant Battalion”). They supported one another and gave strength to one another during those unspeakable times… My mother called them “Lagerschwesters” (“camp sisters”). I would like to pay tribute to those mothers now: Elisabeth (Beuji) Legmann (whose son, George, is here with us), Dora Löwy, Sara Grün, Ibolya Kovács, Eva Fleischmannová, Magda Schwartz and my mother Miriam Rosenthal who was the last of the seven mothers to pass away in February 2018 at the age of 96. Additionally, last year I met Lynne Farbman, who is also here today. Lynne discovered that her mother, Rachel Senor (née Kartschner, from Vilnius, Lithu- ania), gave birth to her in the Mühldorf subcamp. My mother was always asked, “How can you believe in God after what you have seen and gone through yourself?”. Her answer simply was, “I brought a baby back from hell”. With the passage of time, survivors and eyewitnesses are quickly dwindling. The seven babies – and now eight – may be the youngest of the Holocaust survivors and could very well be the last living links to the Holocaust. I was too young to physically experience the horrors first hand. But what I call “biological infusion” – being in my mother’s womb and delivered behind barbed wire among the dying, tortured and emaciated prisoners, and listening to my mother’s often re- peated stories – has imbued me with a heightened emotional sensitivity to the utter brutality and evil committed here and elsewhere. A commemoration is a testament to what came before. Every- one here today knows what happened and why it happened – antisemitism is a scourge that must be recognised for what it is and what it will lead to. Eyewitness testimonies, muse- ums, books, war films, war trials are all available to everyone and anyone who questions or doubts but wants to learn or investigate the past. It is undeniable that there is more first- hand information and more documented testimony about the atrocities committed by the Nazis than any war prior to or since the SecondWorldWar. So this 80th commemoration is pivotal because the number of survivors and liberators is rapid- ly declining – and with them, their personal testimonies which are living, direct connections to history. About two weeks ago, the Claims Conference published the “VanishingWitnesses” report. The analysis of population projections and mortality rates provides data through 2040. Notably, nearly 50% of all Holocaust survivors will pass away within the next six years, while 70% will pass away within ten years and 90% within 15 years. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that the horror that befell millions upon millions of innocent people continues to be told and retold and that the documented truths don’t find their way into the dustbin of history. It is our fervent hope that historic sites throughout Germany, Poland and indeed all of Europe be maintained as beacons of light to draw everyone – the curious, the doubters and the deniers – and that museums continue to flourish, that education is ramped up so that future generations will know and understand what human beings are capable of doing to other human beings. Hate, antisemitism, apathy, indifference and silence can again lead to the horrors of the past.We all pray that this will never happen again. Thank you and may God bless all of us. Leslie Rosenthal was born in the Kaufering I subcamp of Dachau on 28 February 1945. His mother, Miriam Rosen- thal, was a Hungarian Jew. She was deported from the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp to Dachau. He is one of seven children who were born in the Kaufering I subcamp and survived. Today, he lives in Canada.