Eighty years after the Holocaust, far too many individuals are both downplaying its severity or denying it altogether, warned Merrill Eisenhower Atwater, great-grandson of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
His remarks got here as nations all over the world on Thursday commemorated the eightieth anniversary of Victory in Europe Day.
On Might 8, 1945, Nazi Germany formally surrendered to the Allied powers, bringing an finish to the struggle in Europe—a battle that claimed the lives of roughly 40 million individuals, together with the extermination of 6 million Jews.
Final month, Eisenhower Atwater took half within the March of the Dwelling on Holocaust Remembrance Day, strolling alongside survivors and hundreds of individuals from all over the world. The march traces the trail from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the Nazi dying camps in occupied Poland, in a solemn tribute to the victims and in honor of the survivors and their liberators.
“If you’re sitting with 80 Holocaust survivors and each you and they’re crying due to how particular the second is—and so they let you know, ‘With out your great-grandfather, this by no means would have occurred’—I say, with out your bravery, this by no means would have occurred,” Eisenhower Atwater informed Fox Information Digital on Wednesday,
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The Ohrdruf focus camp close to Buchewald, Germany. Then-American Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander in chief of the European Allied forces, and his troopers found 70 prisoners who had been shot down within the courtyard in Germany on April 4. (Picture by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone by way of Getty Pictures)
“One individual equals a number of lives that have been saved. It wasn’t simply the liberation of the camps—it was saving generations,” he added.
Among the many march’s individuals was Israel Meir Lau, former chief rabbi of Israel and a baby survivor of Buchenwald, who personally met Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who led the Allied offensive towards the Nazis in Europe, in the course of the camp’s liberation.
Additionally remembered was Chaim Herzog, father of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who was readily available for the march. A British military officer throughout World Warfare II, Chaim Herzog performed a task in liberating the Bergen-Belsen focus camp. His father, Yitzhak Isaac Halevi Herzog—who would additionally change into a chief rabbi of Israel—met with Gen. Eisenhower in 1946 as a part of a mission to help Jewish survivors throughout postwar Europe.
Eisenhower Atwater known as his inclusion “humbling” and mentioned the march allowed him to “sit and speak with unsung heroes.”
Merrill Eisenhower Atwater and Eva Clarke in Auschwitz on April 23, 2025. (Picture by Chen Schimmel /Worldwide March of the Dwelling)
One survivor particularly, Eva Clarke, left a deep impression. “She’s one of many kindest souls I’ve ever met. Discovering out that the gasoline ran out only a couple days earlier than she was born—that’s divine intervention,” he informed Fox Information Digital. “She led the way in which. Simply an unimaginable girl with an unimaginable story. She ought to encourage everybody.”
Clarke was born on April 29, 1945 on the gates of Mauthausen focus camp, one in all solely three identified infants to have survived beginning there.
Clarke’s mom, Anka Kauderova, endured three and a half years in focus camps: Theresienstadt in then-Czechoslovakia, Auschwitz, and the Freiberg slave labor camp and armament manufacturing facility in Germany. She was ultimately transported in open coal wagons, together with 2,000 different prisoners, on a grueling 17-day journey with out meals and with minimal water to Mauthausen.
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“My mother and father have been in Theresienstadt for 3 years, which was unusually lengthy. They have been younger, sturdy, and in a position to work. To some extent, it was a transit camp to a dying camp,” Clarke informed Fox Information Digital.
“On the finish of September 1944, their luck ran out. My father was despatched to Auschwitz, and extremely, my mom volunteered to observe him the subsequent day. She didn’t know the place he was going and, ever the optimist, believed it couldn’t worsen and so they’d survive,” she mentioned.
Anka by no means noticed her husband once more. An eyewitness later informed her that he was shot and killed within the dying march close to Auschwitz on Jan. 18, 1945. Auschwitz was liberated by the Russian military on Jan. 27.
In 1943, Anka turned pregnant. “It was harmful, however she met my father secretly. Turning into pregnant in a focus camp was thought of against the law punishable by dying,” Clarke mentioned.
Eva Clarke as a child held by her mom in Mauthausen focus camp after liberation. (Courtesy: Eva Clarke)
Her brother was born in February 1944 however died of pneumonia two months later. “Had my mom arrived at Auschwitz with a child in her arms, each would have been despatched to the gasoline chamber. No one knew she was pregnant once more—with me.”
In April 1945, Anka was despatched to Mauthausen. “It’s a good looking village on the Danube in Austria, however the camp sits on a steep hill behind it. When my mom noticed the identify on the prepare station, she was shocked—she had heard how horrific it was. That shock seemingly triggered her labor, and he or she started giving beginning to me,” Clarke mentioned.
She credit her survival to timing. “On April 28, the Nazis ran out of gasoline. I used to be born on April 29. Hitler dedicated suicide on April 30. On Might 5, the American eleventh Armored Division liberated the camp.”
When the People arrived, they introduced meals and drugs—although many, weakened, died upon receiving them. Three weeks later, as soon as Anka regained power, U.S. forces repatriated her to Prague. There, Anka met her second husband, and the 2 left to keep away from residing below communism, ultimately settling within the U.Ok.
Eva Clarke, a Holocaust survivor born within the Mauthausen focus camp in 1945, meets Merrill Eisenhower, great-grandson of President Dwight Eisenhower, in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 26, 2025. (Picture by Yossi Might/Worldwide March of the Dwelling)
“I really feel Merrill is my new finest buddy,” Clarke mentioned of Eisenhower Atwater. “It was overwhelming to satisfy somebody whose great-grandfather performed such an vital function in ending the struggle. I used to be delighted to reconnect with him once more in Auschwitz a couple of weeks in the past. Everybody wished to thank him for what his great-grandfather did.”
Clarke will return to Mauthausen this Sunday to mark the eightieth anniversary of its liberation by U.S. forces. “I’ll be there with two different infants who have been born below related circumstances. We’re so grateful, I can’t even specific it,” she informed Fox Information Digital.
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Reflecting on the ethical readability his great-grandfather exemplified, Eisenhower Atwater underscored that we’re all human beings first.
“Everyone knows proper from flawed. It’s flawed to kill individuals, flawed to place infants in ovens, flawed to place individuals in gasoline chambers. That’s clear,” he mentioned.
He acknowledged that Holocaust denial typically stems from disbelief. “It’s simple to say one thing didn’t occur as a result of it’s onerous to grasp the dying of that many individuals. I get that. Nevertheless it did occur. Nazi Germans killed 10,000 individuals a day—it’s well-documented. They documented it themselves, and the Allied forces noticed it first-hand.
“No one actually desires to speak concerning the dying of six million individuals over a five-to-six-year interval,” he added. “Nevertheless it’s the reality.”
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