Declaring that the Nazis attempted “to do away” with evidence that they murdered the Jews, Dr. Yehuda Bauer, a leading authority on Holocaust studies, called on Jews “to preserve every shred of evidence possible of what happened” during the Holocaust.
“This is the 12th hour,” for survivors who have not done so to come forth with oral and written documentation, said Bauer, head of the institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University and director of the Institute’s Division of Holocaust Studies, in an address to several hundred persons at the Center for Holocaust Studies in Brooklyn.
In his talk at the Center, described as the only institution in the U.S. exclusively devoted to the collection of Holocaust documents and artifacts, Bauer said that some had a “tendency for the mystification of the Holocaust,” so that the Nazis could be absolved of the murders. He emphasized that “the Jewish people could not have prevented the Holocaust. They were powerless.”
According to Bauer, there was “no one who foresaw what actually came: the mass murder of Jews. Citing evidence, he disagreed sharply with those who say Jews went like sheep to the slaughter. He said while there was information on the mass murder during the war, people did not comprehend it.
Dr. Yaffa Eliach, director of the Center and professor of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College, noted that the U.S. with its large Jewish community has not yet built a living memorial center, museum and library on the Holocaust, like the ones in Europe and Israel. The Center, she said, plans to construct a building centrally located in Manhattan which will serve as an American Yad Vashem.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
