Appeal to young voters – Holocaust survivors call for voting.

The European elections are important for the direction of the EU. In an open letter, Holocaust survivors and World War II witnesses have appealed to first-time voters to cast their vote – and strengthen democracy.

Go vote, vote democratically: “That would be my best birthday present,” says Walter Frankenstein. He will be 100 years old on June 30th. His video message will be broadcast at the press conference at which an open letter from Holocaust survivors and witnesses of the Second World War will be presented. Frankenstein is one of them. He and his wife survived in the Berlin underground. He now lives in Sweden.

In the open letter, initiated by the campaign platform Avaaz, they appeal to first-time voters to go to the polls and do everything in their power for democracy. “For millions of you, the European elections are the first election in your life. For many of us, it could be the last.” This is what the letter says. Eva Umlauf has also signed: “We survivors may know more than others“, says the 81-year-old. They have experienced what it means to be persecuted, to have no protection, no rights. Umlauf is a psychotherapist, she comes from Slovakia and lives in Munich. She is still working, “as long as she can”.

As a two-year-old, she and her mother were among those who survived Auschwitz. It was pure coincidence that the locomotive that transported them to the extermination camp had to be repaired and so they only arrived there when Jews were no longer being gassed, she remembers. But to this day, she says, she is still painfully missing the numerous family members who were murdered.

Survived hidden in a garden shed

Umlauf sits on the podium with 95-year-old Ruth Winkelmann at the press conference where they present the open letter. Winkelmann survived the Holocaust with her mother, hiding in a garden shed in the north of Berlin. 17 family members, including her father, were murdered during the Nazi regime. “When the first one didn’t come home, it was clear that we were second-class citizens,” she reports.

Holocaust survivor Leon Weintraub joined the event live via video. He is 98 years old and, like the others, tireless when it comes to keeping memories alive. Born in Lodz, Poland, he tells an impressive story about the German invasion of Poland, how the Jewish population was herded into the ghetto and treated inhumanely there. As a young adult, he saw German men surround an old Jew and cut off his beard – so brutally that a piece of skin was torn off.

When they were deported to Auschwitz, Weintraub was able to save himself by inconspicuously joining a column of workers. After a life-threatening odyssey from concentration camp to concentration camp, he finally made it to Donaueschingen, which had already been liberated.

Commitment to democracy even in old age

All four contemporary witnesses are intensively involved – and regardless of their advanced age. Just like the other signatories. They go to schools and events to explain how important democracy is and that they consider the current right-wing populist movements to be dangerous.

All the political education is apparently not enough, says Eva Umlauf, frustrated. The high number of young people who vote for the AfD worries her. “I’m afraid of the future. Not of my future, I don’t have that much anymore, but of the future of the younger generation.” Perhaps more people should go to other schools and not just to high schools. Teachers and students there are actually always very well prepared, Umlauf thinks.

Sometimes she is stunned by the sheer ignorance. “When I go to the doctors for an examination and they see my Auschwitz number in my skin, sometimes they don’t know what it is. One even asked: ‘What did you cut yourself into?'”

Fear for the future of the younger generation

Walter Frankenstein is primarily addressing young people. When they say: “Yes, I don’t know who to vote for, so I’d rather not vote at all. That’s the worst thing you can do.” “We couldn’t prevent it back then. But you can today,” the open letter says. It warns: back then, too, it didn’t start with concentration camps; the right-wingers came to power through democratic means. “Too many people underestimated them,” and didn’t take them seriously, is his verdict.

In Walter Frankenstein’s memory, the situation in 1932/1933 was similar to today: “A weak democratic government and a party that gathered people who were dissatisfied,” he warns and calls on readers to fight for democracy.

During the press conference, it was strikingly quiet as Ruth Winkelmann, Eva Umlauf, Walter Frankenstein and Leon Weintraub talked about what they had suffered and how many family members they had lost. And it was impressive how much effort they made to travel long distances and give long, exhausting lectures, even at their advanced age, to warn about the loss of democracy.