Holocaust remembrance day

Don’t be neutral, especially towards human suffering, insists Holocaust survivor

Nazi death camp survivor Ivan Lefkovits shared harrowing testimony of his experiences on Monday to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day at UN Geneva, with a timeless message for present and future generations: “Don't be neutral, especially not towards human suffering.”

Recalling the murder of his father and brother, both victims of Hitler’s efforts to wipe out Jews, 88-year-old Mr. Lefkovits noted that many European countries subscribed to his views and supported them materially. Slovakia had paid the Nazi authorities to take away Jewish citizens from his home country to concentration camps, he told assembled representatives from UN Member States at the ceremony.

Europe “was already a landscape of atrocities” in the 1920s, Mr. Lefkovits continued. “Antisemitism was not just in Germany; it was in many, many places in Europe, in many places of the countries who are represented here.”

If the root cause of the Holocaust lies with Hitler, it should be attributed to the fascist leader not when he attained power, but much earlier, when he wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Mr. Lefkovits insisted. “Nobody believed in it, but he said what he wanted to do and he did it and people helped him to get the power.”

Holocaust Remembrance Day 2025 comes 80 years to the day since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp in occupied Poland. Hardened Red Army soldiers reportedly broke down in tears at what they found inside the grounds of the prison, where one million people were murdered.

Every year on 27 January, the world unites to honor the memory of the six million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators, a commemoration that also extends to the Roma and Sinti communities, people with disabilities, LGBTIQ+ individuals and all others who suffered from the systemic violence, torture, and genocide of the Nazi regime.

As significant as the day is in serving as a reminder of the horrors of the Nazis’ Final Solution, the ordeal for many other concentration camp survivors did not end for many more months.

This included Mr. Lefkovits, his mother and older brother Paul – “Palko” – who were deported to Ravensbruck women’s concentration camp in northern Germany in November 1944. Older boys were grouped with the men, while seven-year-old Ivan stayed with his mother, Elisabeth.

“Unfortunately, that came the worst moment in life of my mother when our “Palko”, my brother, was separated into the men's camp which was built rapidly in the back of the Ravensbruck and we have never seen him again.”

It was to be another 50 years before Mr. Lefkovits learned that his brother had likely died an agonising death after being crammed into a makeshift execution cabin at Ravensbruck with other male prisoners and gassed.

Shortly after arriving at Ravensbruck, young Ivan explained how his mother kept him fed by volunteering for heavy work which earned her extra rations, giving them to him.

“It became clear that there is no chance to survive on these food rations. She volunteered to (the) so- called Aussenkommandos, doing heavy work, and obtaining an extra bowl of soup – for me. When returning from work her only concern was me. Back in 1943 I would have started school - Jews were not allowed to. In Ravensbrück she taught me to write and maths. Interestingly, when you are doing mental activity, you do not feel hunger.”

After being moved from Ravensbrück, Ivan and his mother were sent to Bergen-Belsen camp in the last months of the war. Piles of dead bodies lay everywhere and starvation had set in after the camp guards had left, leaving the detainees with nothing, Mr. Lefkovits noted, recalling his mother’s memoirs.

“I am not going to describe that situation, since towards the end I was almost clinically dead,” he insisted. “I remember clearly the huge fire extinguishing basin, full of water, but bodies floating there…My mother told me, ‘We do not drink from that, who does, dies.’… (The) suffering of one person, one family, is meaningless, it's only a small mosaic stone of suffering of millions.”

Once liberated, it took many months before young Ivan recovered enough to go return to Slovakia, full of hatred for the Nazis.

“On the way home, we have seen the destroyed Germany. We have seen that the country, by the way, the people, the shouting, you have seen it in films: “Wollen Sie den totalen Krieg” and they were shouting, ‘Yes, we want a total war.’ They got a total war and they were totally destroyed…I hated the German(s). There was nothing worse for me than German. We travelled through Germany, arrived to Presov and I have seen all this distressing (scenes) and I realized I do not hate anymore the German.”

Urging today’s younger generations to study history “not necessarily to learn, but to understand”, Mr. Lefkovits quoted Dante as he insisted that neutrality should not be employed when human suffering is involved. “Remember that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”

ends