Remembrance work as a gesture of humility
The work of remembrance requires a break – as a gesture of reflection. This is how Charlotte Kaiser describes her voluntary service at the “Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center” in Chicago, USA, during the year 2017/2018. The subject of the “Holocaust” is an integral part of the school curriculum and therefore all students visit this museum.
Each tour ends with a speech by a Holocaust survivor. For Charlotte Kaiser, remembering the atrocities of the National Socialists is a gesture of humility towards the victims.
Conversations with Holocaust survivors
Kaiser and another volunteer were primarily responsible for contact with the survivors. This meant they spent a lot of time with them, talking and asking questions. For them, contact with the survivors was also a way to show respect to the victims: by listening to their stories and taking their message seriously.
“The work and the encounter with survivors of the Holocaust was the strongest motivation for my application to Action Reconciliation and, in retrospect, is also what gave me the most strength and the greatest joy during all those months,” she writes in a letter to her Parish.
Before her volunteer service, Kaiser knew only two Jewish people who were hidden from the Nazis in Germany. After her year in Chicago, she now knows 50 Holocaust survivors and their life stories.
Commitment to the victims
Kaiser emphasizes that there is an obligation towards the victims of National Socialist terror. This obligation also includes dealing with the history of one’s own family. To have a conversation with a survivor as a contemporary witness is a great privilege in the USA.
Even though there are fewer survivors in Germany than in the USA, it is an important element for history lessons and the public debate about National Socialism.
Charlotte Kaiser’s volunteer service has strengthened her belief that intense encounters with contemporary witnesses and vigilant remembrance of the atrocities of the Holocaust as well as respectful treatment of survivors are essential for a peaceful future.
