Journalist and Holocaust Survivor Noah Klieger's Powerful Message to the UN

In honor of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony held at the UN, journalist Noah Klieger recounts his story as a Holocaust survivor, emphasizing the importance of teaching about the Holocaust worldwide, especially now as the survivor generation is disappearing.

This took place in January 1945, 72 years ago today. "When the Soviet forces reached Auschwitz, I was no longer there," began Noah Klieger in his speech at the UN assembly, a journalist for Yedioth Ahronoth for 60 years. "The Germans, realizing they wouldn't stop the Allies' advance, evacuated the Auschwitz camps - a complex of 45 camps, nine days earlier, to other camps where we were supposed to continue working to help Germany win the war.

"About 60,000 of us were evacuated from the Auschwitz camps, forced to march at a pace no one could maintain. Those who couldn't keep up were shot," Klieger recalls. "The roads and pathways from Auschwitz were littered with bodies of people shot by the SS for not keeping pace. Others lay down and died from exhaustion. The march lasted five days to Gliwice, a small town on the border, where fewer than 19,000 of us arrived. The rest were left along the way."

Klieger continues to describe how the Germans crammed them into freight train wagons - 150 people per wagon. "After a while, about two-thirds of the prisoners in my wagon died, and we sat on a pile of corpses. When we finally arrived at the camp, some of us calculated that they hadn't eaten for two weeks. How did they survive? A few of us managed to survive, not many."

On Hitler, may his name be erased: "He didn't seize power by force - he was elected. And to this day, it cannot be explained"

At this point, he pauses and explains why he chose to share his personal story from such a platform: "None of this is new. What's new is that for the first time, I had the opportunity to speak with you at the United Nations. And this will be the last time I can do so. I've had the honor of being in the new Israel, the new homeland for Jews - from the very beginning. One thing is sure: 'My days on this earth are almost over, but my country will live forever. And now, as we survivors approach our end, it's time for the UN to take a step forward and adopt a decision for the future. The future must be that the UN adopts a resolution for the Holocaust to be taught globally because my friends: today, there are billions around the world who don't know the Holocaust happened and they need to know it did. The subject of the Holocaust, and also the subject of anti-Semitism, needs to be part of educational curricula worldwide."

According to Klieger, Auschwitz is a place that cannot be explained. Just as "it cannot be explained how the most advanced nation in the world at that time, the Germans, could blindly and enthusiastically follow, how to say it - such a caricature. Most Germans believed in him. And I tell this to third-generation Germans because it's true. Their grandparents and fathers voted for him in elections. He didn't take power by force - he was elected. And to this day, it cannot be explained.

"So what I can do is tell the stories. When I was in Auschwitz, the only thing we could do freely was dream. I had three dreams - but I knew I couldn't fulfill them. The first was to escape from this hell on earth, and I was convinced I wouldn't leave it alive - because no Jew brought to Auschwitz was brought there to survive. A person had to be very fortunate to survive, I was lucky. Very lucky.

"So my first dream was to be free, and as I said, I was convinced I'd never fulfill it. The second dream was 'if you survive, you will tell about what happened in the camps'. You will take on a mission to inform the world about what happened'. And finally, my third dream was to help the Jewish people become a united nation again, with a united state like we had before the Romans sent us into 2,000 years of exile worldwide. So, I can proudly say again today, I have achieved all my goals."