It took a few sentences to set the tone for the conference, to describe the room, and perhaps also: its boundaries. At the beginning of the conference “Remember in order (not) to forget” – the “not” in the original crossed out like a warning – Vera Szackamer, member of the executive board of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, spoke of remembering as a burden, as a burden, as a compulsion. Her father comes from Poland and was exiled to Siberia, her mother and grandmother survived Auschwitz. “In our house there was no laughing and no crying.” Only when the neighbor came did the mother cry: the women knew each other from the camp. “Of course” she married the son of Auschwitz survivors, says Szackamer, and gave her children the names of murdered relatives. It was only to them, the grandchildren, that Szackamer’s parents, who previously could not or could not speak, were able to tell everything.
Central Council of Jews: Conference “Remember in order (not) to forget” – Culture
