It’s like it all happened yesterday

Although since the end of 2. More than three quarters of a century has passed since the end of World War II, there are still living witnesses who can attest to the horrors of that time with their personal testimony. The Czech-German Fund for the Future approached nearly 1,000 survivors of Nazi persecution and asked them to share their personal memories and life credos. From their answers, an exceptional book entitled Jako by by se to všechno stalo včera / Als wäre das alles gestern geschehen emerged, which consists of their photographic portraits and quotations, to which Radka Denemarková added a remarkable essay on the Holocaust based on their testimonies – a Holocaust whose possibility still survives in post-war society. A counterpoint to her cautionary reflection are the photographs of 22 survivors taken by Karel Cudlín – they reflect an indomitable life force despite the suffering they experienced.

The traumas of the survivors are the traumas of us all

The creation of this book was initiated by the Czech-German Future Fund, which since 1998 has been supporting projects that deepen insights into the common culture and history of our two countries. “The traumas of the survivors are traumas of all of us, but in order for them to still touch us after all these years, it is necessary to give voice to the voices of specific individuals who can still speak about them,” say the directors, Petra Ernstberger and Tomáš Jelínek. Survivors’ memories of their relatives and friends are unique; they and the dead have names, and it is necessary to remember that. Among those portrayed are those who passed through the concentration camps in Auschwitz and Terezín, survived the extermination of Lidice, or those whose parents were shot before their own eyes, executed for their participation in the resistance or tortured in the concentration camps. And yet, just like their photographic faces, there seems to be no resignation in their memories.

We still live in a civilized cultural society that made the Holocaust

However, the memories outlined here also remind us once again that the origins of the war and the Holocaust were closely linked to the very essence of our modern European society and modern power mechanisms in general. Radka Denemarková reminds us of this fact with the utmost urgency: ‘We still live in a civilised cultural society that made the Holocaust possible. And it did not prevent it. When the Holocaust happened, people refused to believe the facts that were in front of their eyes.” He goes on to explain, “Even today, our perceptions have not changed; again, we will not be prepared to hear the warning signs, even if they are right in front of our eyes. We are puffed up and blinded by the prospect of an economically secure, consumerist world; we do not see the disappearance of the moral point of view; we do not perceive the injustices and genocides of the world; we are silent to the marginalization of people, lest we become infected by their misfortunes. The mass killings were unimaginable, but we must imagine the unimaginable much sooner in our time or we will not prevent the injustices.”