Today is the 80th anniversary of the release of Auschwitz, the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp. It is also International Holocaust Memorial Day, and I, like so many others whose family are merged with this dark chapter in history, think of family members who perished during the Holocaust.
As fewer and fewer people who experienced the Holocaust are with us to tell their stories, to preserve the victims’ memory and help tell the stories of survivors are more important than ever. Survivors like 103-year-old Margot Friedländer, whose family were killed in Auschwitz, who have spent the last decade helping people understand the lessons of the past, while emphasizing the importance of humanity, responsibility and compassion in the light of hatred and intolerance .
This year, the decade-long partnership between the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Archive and Google Arts & Culture & Culture supports Memorial’s Vital Digitization Efforts that will remember and share stories of victims and survivors of the German Nazi concentration and Extermination Camp. Today we publish a selection of previously unseen works of art created secret by prisoners such as Halina Ołomucka and Jerzy Zieleziński, who document the unimaginable disorder, but also reveals hope and resilience. This is the first step in a project to digitize thousands of artifacts that tell the devastating experiences of those who suffered from Auschwitz.
Through a Google.org grant of $ 1 million, we also support the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation’s development of the project “Auschwitz in front of your eyes”, which will make the museum’s live online guided tournament experience available to everyone everywhere. Our support will help develop the technological platform and its accessibility, including the introduction of live image text and AI-based translation into multiple languages, as well as collaboration with schools to increase students access.
This work is based on previous Google and Google Arts & Culture Work with organizations such as Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Polish History Museum and the Jewish Museum Berlin to preserve and reinforce the stories, history and experiences of Jewish people and others influenced of the horrors of Holocaust.
I am humbled to attend the Mind Day event held today at the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp, with the remaining survivors present. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum streams the event on its YouTube channel.
We remain engaged in our shared responsibility for promoting the Holocaust -ER Remedy to make sure the past is not forgotten.
[The author is on the advisory board of the Margot Friedländer Foundation.]