German history: “As if it were yesterday”: 80 years after Auschwitz

Margot Friedländer is one of the last people who survived the Holocaust and can still tell about it. “For me it’s as if it were yesterday,” says the 103-year-old when asked about the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz 80 years ago. “We experienced it. We are, we know what, what it was like.”

She herself was a prisoner in the Theresienstadt concentration camp at the time. Her mother and brother were murdered in Auschwitz. “I lost my whole family,” says the fragile-looking little woman in her Berlin apartment. On the table behind her are awards for her reconciliation work, a “Bambi” for her courage, photos with politicians, a framed cover photo of her on “Vogue.”

Friedländer has told her story many times since she returned to her native Berlin from exile in America at the age of almost 90. She wants to keep doing it, even if her voice starts to crack. “Because I’m trying to make it clear to you what happened, that we can’t change it anymore, but that it’s for you, that it shouldn’t happen again. That’s my mission.”

More than a million people

On January 27, 1945, Soviet soldiers reached the German death camp Auschwitz in Wehrmacht-occupied Poland. They found about 7,000 survivors. 1.3 million were deported to the camp. About 1.1 million of them were killed – murdered in gas chambers or shot or destroyed by work, hunger, disease. A million Jews were among those murdered. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial lists these facts. On the 80th anniversary, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will remember them there again.

And yet they are hard to grasp in 2025. “More than a million dead in Auschwitz, around six million dead in the Holocaust: These are the numbers of a monstrous crime that no one can do anything with,” says Andrea Löw, head of the Munich center for Holocaust Studies. Perhaps those born later can only really understand individual fates, like that of Berliner Margot Friedländer, who was ostracized, arrested and kidnapped as a young woman. “These were people like you and me who were torn from their lives,” says Löw. “We need to tell these stories.”

“Actions were not ‘otherworldly'”

Auschwitz is also a code in German post-war history for shame and repression, for memory and horror. “I find it increasingly difficult to say that the planning and implementation of the Holocaust were “unimaginable” or “incomprehensible,” says Deborah Hartmann, head of the Wannsee Conference Memorial House. There, in 1942, high-ranking representatives of the Nazi regime discussed the extermination of European Jews on an industrial scale.

This break in civilization calls our categories into question, says Hartmann. “Today, however, the historical distance is increased even further with references to the ‘unimaginable’.” All steps in the bureaucratically planned mass murder could be penetrated. “The acts are not ‘otherworldly’,” says Hartmann.

“People want to know about it”

The historian Hanno Sowade designed the exhibition “After Hitler,” which can be seen at the House of History in Bonn until January 2026. “It’s one of the most difficult topics I’ve ever curated,” admits Sowade. “It has shaped Germany and the Germans for 80 years.”

He speaks of four generations: the “agency leaders” who wanted to forget after the war. The generation of children who demanded enlightenment. The grandchildren’s generation that wants to remember. And now the fourth generation. “The special thing about this fourth generation is that it has a very large proportion of people with a migrant background,” says Sowade. National Socialism is not necessarily part of their family history. “We have to find new ways to engage.”

From the historian’s point of view, there is no lack of will to do so. The exhibition has already had more than 50,000 visitors. Thousands have written their thoughts on small cardboard butterflies. “People want to deal with the topic, they want to hear about it.”

Concern “that our country is taking a wrong turn again”

Christoph Heubner recognizes this desire to remember. “I see people getting involved in this,” says the executive vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee, which represents survivors. “But I also see people who say: There has to be an end to remembering.”

Heubner would find that absurd, especially today. “There is a legitimate concern, given the political developments in Germany and Europe, that our country is taking a wrong turn again and getting into troubled waters when it comes to right-wing extremism and populist hatred,” he warns.

Fairy lights for 26 years

“Never again” became the catchphrase of the post-war years, in both West and East Germany. Never again Auschwitz. Never again fascism. Never again war. Never look away and keep still again. To this day, thousands of people continue to take to the streets. Berliner Jutta Kayser, for example, has been organizing the Pankow fairy lights together with others since 1999 – for 26 years now, always on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

At that time they were protesting against the right-wing Republicans. Today we are still fighting right-wing extremism and racism. “We have no choice but to try to do something about it,” says the 73-year-old former teacher. “If you don’t do anything, then it might soon be 1933 again.”

Looking back is “legitimate and important”

But is the rise of right-wing, right-wing radical, right-wing extremist views today really comparable to back then? “I find it exhausting and pointless when today’s politicians are repeatedly compared to Hitler,” says Holocaust researcher Löw. “But to look at where there are parallels or structures like back then, how right-wing radical parties made their way into the government back then – that’s legitimate and important.” Löw explicitly mentions the election campaign’s demands for “remigration” or for the revocation of German citizenship for certain groups. “There are clear parallels to the 1930s.”

Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer also sees this. She doesn’t like to answer questions about today’s parties or election results. “I don’t know much about politics,” says the old lady. “But I always say: That’s how it started back then. Be careful. Don’t do it. Respect people, that’s the most important thing.”