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Cultural theorist Aleida Assmann has suggested that "communicative memory" – the kind passed directly from those who lived through events – lasts for around eighty years. At first, that sounds like an academic observation. But eight decades on from the Holocaust it feels more immediate.
We are living through the very moment she described: the point at which memory begins to slip from the hands of those who experienced it into those who did not.
As witnesses fade, memory risks fading with them
For much of the past eighty years, Holocaust remembrance has had human reference points. Survivors told of their experiences and people listened – such powerful testimonies made the past feel close. Not just something that happened, but something that was lived. We didn’t need to be told why it mattered, because we could hear it.
