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Talking with Holocaust Survivors

At Home Nowhere and Everywhere

By Moritz Küpper

They survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen -- or they were sent abroad as children so they could escape the horrors the Nazis had in store for them. In a book published by DER SPIEGEL, 24 Holocaust survivors talk about the suffering and challenges they faced.

The Holocaust should never be forgotten. It is a sentiment that everyone can agree with. Yet with direct witnesses to the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II becoming fewer and fewer, remembering will soon become more difficult. The last Holocaust survivors will soon fall silent.

DER SPIEGEL deputy editor-in-chief Martin Doerry has endeavoured to do his part to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. His new book, "At Home Everywhere and Nowhere" ("Nirgendwo und überall zu Haus"), is a compilation of conversations with a number of those who managed to survive Nazi terror. The conversations will likely be some of the last first-hand testimonies left behind by those who saw the Holocaust first hand.

"The danger of forgetting is getting greater," warned Wolfgang Thierse, the vice president of the German Bundestag, as he introduced the book in Berlin recently. "We need sources," Thierse said. "And recounting history on the basis of single biographies seems to me to be proper and appropriate in the age of individualization."

In order to complete the book and recount the various life stories, Doerry travelled extensively in Europe and the United States with SPIEGEL's long-time photographer Monika Zucht. The stories are those of people who survived the concentration camps in Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and Buchenwald. They're the stories of children who were sent abroad by their parents, and the stories of people who left Germany in order to survive elsewhere -- people who, in some cases, returned later on.

The book recounts 24 such personal histories, including those of well-known personalities such as Ralph Giordano, Alfred Grosser and Imre Kertész, but also those of less illustrious historical witnesses.

The title of the book comes from Saul Friedländer, a Prague-born historian who was hidden in a French children's home by his parents during the Holocaust. He now splits his time between Tel Aviv and Los Angeles; his father and his mother died in the Holocaust. Friedländer told Doerry that he is "at home everywhere and nowhere."

Then there's Vienna-born Ruth Klüger, who survived detention in several Nazi concentration camps along with her mother; her father was murdered. In the interview, the professor of German literature speaks about her hometown: "To me, every cobblestone in Vienna is anti-Semitic," Klüger says.

Another survivor interviewed for the book is Agnes Sassoon, who recounts her traumatic separation from her parents and her detention in Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. Still, she says, "I'm not able to feel hatred."

These are "intense conversations with the last representatives of a vanished Jewry," Thierse remarked. They talk about their history and what it means to be Jewish -- and they talk about how they won their struggle for survival.

The aim of the book is -- via the personal stories and the accompanying portraits -- to enable even those generations who will not be able to hear first-hand accounts of the Nazi regime to learn about its barbarity. Or, as Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel says in conversation with Doerry, "everyone who hears a witness today, will himself become a witness."