On January 27, 1945, Red Army soldiers opened the gates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and freed the survivors. World opinion then discovered the existence of Nazi extermination camps, organized on an industrial scale. In France, where even the term “survivor” will be debated, voices will quickly be raised to complain that we talk about it too much. In reality, few newspapers were moved by the discovery of the camps. Among them, the resistant newspaper Liberation (whose rights holders will much later do us the honor of giving us their title), is practically the only one to publish on the front page a report on what he calls “The slow death camp”, with Humanity, which published on September 13, 1944 a chilling testimony from inside the camp. Public opinion then does not want to listen to them, historian Tal Bruttmann explains in a fascinating interview, because it does not want to hear what these Jews, resistance fighters, communists and so many others experienced during the war. She doesn't want it any more today, when the lessons of this 80th anniversary are largely ignored. In Europe, where only 10% of the world's Jewish population now lives, compared to 60% in 1939, anti-Semites are more than ever on the offensive, invigorated by the massacres of October 7 in Israel and by the immediate reflex to blaming the terrible consequences for the Palestinians on the Jews. Teachers are often poorly equipped to tackle the subject in class, as training is as rare as questions are numerous. The survivors whom we brought together for an interview full of sadness – but also of hope – know it: the aim of today's commemoration is above all to draw lessons from Auschwitz for the present.
France
