Esther Adler's eyes gaze somewhere far away as she sings the chants of Hitler Youth that she heard outside her family's apartment in Germany over 80 years ago. She's more than 3,000 miles away from there in her dining room in Canton, Massachusetts, but the memories are still palpable.
Adler is one of thousands of childhood survivors of the Holocaust who are working to preserve the world's collective memory, but everyday more and more of their stories are lost to time.
“There is no guarantee, we have to be alert, and we have to realize that just like antisemitism has never died, has not disappeared, it's the same thing here,” said Adler.
Last year, an average of 42 survivors died every day in Israel, and of the 80,000 survivors living in the U.S. today, an estimated 64,000 are predicted to pass before 2030. Now, with the help of new technologies and old-fashioned storytelling, stories like Adler's will be preserved for generations to come.
"The Jewish community has just been incredible on making tapes and records and filming these stories, but not knowing the individuals is really different," said Rabbi Sara Paasche-Orlow of Northeastern University.
Rabbi Paasche-Orlow, whose father's parents fled Germany in the 1930s, is a part of a vast network within the Jewish community working on Holocaust remembrance.
As director of spiritual care at Hebrew Senior Life, a network of Boston-area assisted living facilities, Rabbi Paasche-Orlow worked with many survivors and joined with Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ARSP), a program that brought German youth to work with survivors.
Today, she is hosting one of these German volunteers in her home to continue this work. She has watched those volunteers be "stunned" by the connection she and her family still have to the Holocaust.
"We have just 100 ways that the Holocaust is integrated into our daily lives as Jews today, or as American Jews who have Holocaust histories in their families," said Rabbi Paasche-Orlow.
As the generation after Adler ages, it is then the duty of the next to carry on their legacies and stories.
"My children know our story, but the oldest one is already over 70, and the youngest was just 60. That would be the second source, and then it really depends on how much the second generation transmits to the third," said Adler.
Today, people interested in hearing survivor stories can go online to places like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Oral History collection in Washington, DC, where over 80,000 stories have been meticulously archived. Other places like Holocaust Centre North in Huddersfield, England and the Shoah Foundation in Los Angeles have similar archives:
- Arolsen Archive
- Yale University Fortunoff Video Archive For Holocaust Testimonies
- University of Michigan Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor History Archive
- The World Holocaust Remembrance Center Yad Vashem Testimonies
- Illinois Holocaust Museum Survivor Profiles
At Northeastern University, Paasche-Orlow organized a speaking event featuring Adler. Adler is the daughter of Polish immigrants, and was living in Breslau, Germany during the rise of Hitler. She escaped by traveling to what was then known as Palestine, and members of her immediate family escaped to the UK and US.
"It took me a long time to call myself a survivor," said Adler, who is 99. "Once I accepted that, I embraced it. I wrote more and spoke more, and it became a part of my life."
Intergenerational links to the Holocaust still exist, but people like Paasche-Orlow fear that as we become more removed from that long-ago event, memories will be more difficult to pass on.
"We still have my generation and people older than me and younger than me who have had direct contact with survivors. And so that immediacy brings something into the world," said Paasche-Orlow.
At Holocaust museums, the conversation on preserving these stories is high-stakes. The latest innovation in the field has been the development of storytelling holograms, which will give visitors the experience of listening to survivors tell their stories in-person after their passing.
The idea originated with Heather Maio Smith, the founder of Storyfile, which has spread the concept of hologram memorials to anyone wanting to extend the presence of a loved one after they die.
If the memories of survivors are to be preserved for the following generations when there are no more Holocaust survivors to share their stories in-person, creating these archives will be a vital resource.
“If you don't keep your history and your identity alive, it will get lost,” said Adler.
