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One of the questions asked by those in Holocaust denial focuses on the number of survivors of concentration camps. How come there were so many survivors? Every Jewish family has a grandfather or great aunt who survived. The argument goes that with so many survivors, is it possible that the number of victims was exaggerated?

Even in the new millennium, concentration-camp survivors are still being admitted to psychiatric wards in public hospitals. Elena was 78 when she returned to the geriatric ward for the 4th time in five years. Her short-term memory was failing and as it did, memories of events in earlier decades came to the fore. Where her memories formerly ruined her life, they were now ruling her life. She had left her surroundings and returned to the Nazi concentration camp where her family were killed. Elena saw other patients as fellow-inmates. Hospital staff with keys were, for her, camp guards. Beyond the big, double-locked doors of the ward lay the ingredients of nightmares. There lay the terror. She was not reliving the past. The past was where she now existed with all its fear and horror.

Those who deny the realities of the Holocaust and the devastation it laid on its victims often fail to take into account that concentration camps also accomodated countless non-Jewish victims.

In the late 1990s another patient (now deceased) could not leave Auschwitz. Even after the camps were liberated, Roma remained there. Even though she migrated to Australia, she remained in Auschwitz. Her memories and experiences kept her locked in that nightmare for the remaining 53 years of her life. When another patient asked her if she had a numbered tattoo on her arm, she rolled up her sleeve and said "No! Only Jews get the tattoo. I am a Pole. I am Catholic ... aah but what they do to the Jews... every day they burn them... you see the chimneys..? day and night they smoke and flames come out... and look: the ashes of the Jews fall all over us. They never stop. The chimneys are always smoking....the ash gets into our throats and makes us cough ...."

As the number of survivors continues to dwindle with time and as distance continues to obscure the barbarity of unspeakable cruelty, holocaust denial will become easier. Our wake-up call is that this tragedy in Europe was emulated and refined in places like Yugoslavia, Uganda, Rwanda, Somalia, Congo and Darfur.

The holocaust was a precedent; a benchmark against which the world and mankind continues to be measured. And found wanting.

Learn more about this author, Elisabeth Mcgrath.
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