This week, students from Ithaca College were preparing to attend a powerful event: an in-person talk with a Holocaust survivor. But, just days before the visit, the speaker, Judy Altmann, fell ill and was hospitalized. The event was cancelled.
This was a stark reminder of something that we rarely acknowledge: we are the last generation who will ever hear these stories firsthand.
At some point, the last Holocaust survivor will tell their story, and no one will be left to say, “I was there.”
This is not just some poetic observation. It’s a fact. Holocaust survivors are aging, and the window to learn from them directly is closing fast. It is estimated as little as 245,000 survivors are still alive, with the youngest survivor reaching 88 years old. Each year, fewer survivors can tell their stories — living proof of an atrocity that many would rather forget. As hatred surges globally, it has never been more important to listen and truly understand the atrocities that killed so many, and left a select few to tell their stories.
We often speak about “never again” as a moral commitment, but it has to be more than a mere slogan. It is an active responsibility: to remember, to educate and to resist the dangerous ideologies that enabled the Holocaust in the first place. And make no mistake, these ideologies are starting to creep back in.
Our current political climate, marked by polarization, scapegoating and a disturbing rise in hate crimes, echoes a bit too closely to the atmosphere of pre-World War II Europe. The normalization of extremist rhetoric, the demonization of minority groups and the apathy of the so-called “mainstream” were all warning signs back then. And they still are now.
That’s why hearing from survivors isn’t just about history — it’s about vigilance. Their stories don’t just teach us what happened. They teach us what could happen again.
In our media-saturated world, it’s easy to just scroll past actual history, to forget the unspeakable horror people endured just decades ago — and the unspeakable horrors people are enduring right now. But, when you’re in a room with a survivor, when you hear their voice crack talking about their friends and family they have lost, how they kept living despite the barbarity surrounding them, you carry that memory differently. You carry it with responsibility.
We owe it to them to show up. We owe it to them to listen. And, we owe it to ourselves, and future generations to ensure that their stories are never silenced by time, apathy, or hate. So, if you have the chance to hear a survivor tell their story, take it. If you can visit a Holocaust museum, go. If you can read their testimonies, read carefully.
Remember that history isn’t something that just happens. It’s something that we shape, every day, through what we believe, what we say and what we do.
