We are living through a turning point in the story of Holocaust remembrance. For decades, memory was carried in living voices, in trembling testimonies, in the quiet authority of those who could say, “I was there.” Survivors did more than recount history; they shaped how it was felt, understood, and passed on. Now, as that generation diminishes, we are entering a new and unfamiliar chapter: one in which memory must endure without its primary witnesses.
The Holocaust is moving from lived memory to history. This shift is not only emotional, but also structural. And history, if left unattended, tends to flatten. It becomes dates, numbers, and generalizations. The risk is not that the Holocaust will be forgotten entirely, but that it will be remembered in ways that are distant, abstract, and detached from the human beings at its center.
The question is not whether we will remember, but how we will remember.
The model of testimony worked because it was firsthand and undeniable. A survivor did not just tell their story; they embodied it. Their presence created a moral urgency that no textbook could replicate. But as their presence fades, we must exert efforts to create new forms of connection that do not rely on proximity to the past, but on responsibility in the present and to the future.
This is where the focus must shift, from the survivors who told their story, to the individuals who perished, the parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles of the survivors whose identities must be returned and lives remembered.
Six million is an overwhelming number. It is so huge that it risks turning their memory into something impersonal. It feels removed, challenging to grasp. For a solid future of Holocaust remembrance, we have an obligation to reverse that effect, and scale the memory into personal individuals, focusing on each perished as individuals, with whom we can relate.
Remembering one person is to humanize their memory. A name, a place of birth, a profession, a family: these details interrupt the anonymity that genocide imposed. They reassert individuality where there was an attempt to erase it. They remind us that the Holocaust was not only the destruction of a people, but the destruction of millions of singular lives, each one complete in its own right.
This is why personal acts of remembrance of the individuals who perished is imperative. Yad Vashem recognized this need decades ago and vigorously collected the personal information of five million individuals who perished, a tremendous accomplishment, all fact-checked and archived. This extraordinary collection enabled a nonprofit organization, Our Six Million (Shem Vener in Hebrew), to create a new tradition of lighting a personal memorial candle in memory of everyone who perished, learning a name, and sharing a story, which are not simply symbolic gestures. The two organizations continue to partner, immortalizing the perished. Moving remembrance from the collective to the personal, and then back again, creating a chain that is both intimate and communal.
In this sense, the passing of survivors does not mark the end of living memory; it marks the transfer of it. Our responsibility is no longer to listen, but to carry. And carrying memory requires intention. It requires choosing not to let the enormity of the Holocaust obscure the humanity within it.
There is also a deeper challenge embedded in this transition. Survivors not only transmit facts, but they also convey meaning, feelings, and small acts of heroism. They spoke about loss, but also about resilience, dignity, and the fragility of moral boundaries. As we move forward, remembrance must hold onto those dimensions as well. To remember the perished is not only to recall how they died, but more importantly, to acknowledge how they lived, and what their lives demand of us.
The Nazis stripped the persecuted of their identity. We have an obligation to return their identity to them.
The memory of Fredl Dicker-Brandeis
In that vein, I choose to light a personal Our Six Million memorial candle each year, in memory of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, a woman who was an artist and educator, with a huge presence, especially when teaching art to hundreds of children in the Theresienstadt camp. Friedl had an enormous impact on those children, to the extent that while drawing flowers and other normative images, they felt as if she removed them from their dire surroundings of the concentration camp. One of her students, Erma Furman, survived, became a professor, and shared that “Friedl’s teaching, the time spent drawing with her, are among the fondest memories of my life.”
In a world saturated with information, memory competes with distraction. The Holocaust risks becoming one historical tragedy among many, referenced and acknowledged, but not truly engaged with. The antidote is not more information, it is more connection. Not broader narratives, but deeper ones.
The future of remembrance will be shaped less by institutions alone and more by individuals, by families, communities, and small acts repeated over time. It must live in homes, around tables, in rituals that feel personal rather than performative. It is our responsibility to take ownership of memory in ways that are active, not passive. Our Six Million, together with Yad Vashem, offers one such solution, supporting the lighting of personal memorial candles every eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, at home, among family and friends.
As the witnesses fall silent, the memories of their family members who did not survive, must not disappear. It will change. It will become quieter, more dependent on us, more vulnerable to how we choose to hold it. As Elie Wiesel said, “to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
The responsibility, then, is clear. Not just to remember that the Holocaust happened, but to remember who it happened to. When asked what would happen when there are no more Holocaust survivors to tell their stories, Elie Wiesel replied, “Maybe you are the only hope I have – make it come true.”
The writer is the founder Our Six Million. https://shemvener.org.il/