“Auschwitz symbolizes the depths to which humanity can sink,

but every time young people make their way to these tear-soaked grounds,

listen to the stories of the survivors and pledge to build a better world,

I know one thing with certainty: Hitler did not win.”

—World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder at the 2013 March of the Living

A Personal Reflection on the Preservation of AuschwitzI made my first trip to Auschwitz in 1986, just after I was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Austria by President Ronald Reagan. Frankly, I didn’t know what to expect and like many other visitors to this very dark place, I arrived with some trepidation.

I was taken on a tour and the first thing that struck me was the terrible conditions I found in the camp. Everything seemed to be disintegrating. The mountain of human hair that had been shaved from women being sent to the gas chambers and had been neglected for over 40 years. The piles of clothing, the hundreds of suitcases had just been left to rot. Even the barracks were deteriorating.

I quickly realized that if nothing were done to protect these relics, there would be little left for future generations to see when they visited the camp in another 40 years. This is especially important when you consider that the last living witnesses will soon leave us. With Holocaust denial gaining traction in some quarters, it is of paramount importance that these artifacts of the Nazi atrocities be preserved.

The first thing I did on my next trip to New York was to hire the curators at the Egyptian Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I brought them to Auschwitz to study the situation and draw up a very detailed plan for preserving everything on the site.

Then, along with two survivor activists, Kalman Sultanik and Ernest Michel, we went out and raised over 40 million dollars to follow up the study and actually preserve these important artifacts. Because of this effort, the piles of hair, the clothing, the suitcases and other personal effects of the more than one million human beings who entered the gates of Auschwitz, and even the remaining structures, are now preserved. As a result of this crucial initiative, decades from now people will be able to see with their own eyes the stark evidence of this terrible legacy.

Ronald S. Lauder

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Establishment of the World Jewish Congressthe world jewish congress (wjc) came into being in August 1936. At that time, more than 250 leaders representing Jewish communities in nearly 30 countries gathered in Geneva for the first WJC plenary assembly, which was convened to mobilize world Jewry in the face of the mounting threat posed by Hitler and his Nazi government.

A resounding resolution adopted at the assembly stated, presciently, that the Nazi Party “does not limit itself to the deprivation of rights and economic ruin of the German Jews. National Socialism wages war against all Jews the world over.” Dr. Nahum Goldmann, who was soon to be elected chairman of the WJC’s administrative committee, staunchly declared, “No compromise is possible with the Nazi. The worst periods of Russian Czarism were happy periods compared with the unspeakable tragedy of today.”

During the next several years, the WJC vigorously strove to help Jews fleeing persecution and to intercede before the League of Nations and with various European governments on behalf of em-battled Jewish communities to counteract virulent anti-Semitic policies and prohibitions.

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The Riegner Telegramafter the outbreak of world war ii, WJC’s Geneva office became the principal source for news about the dire fate of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe and other countries in the German sphere of in-fluence. In August 1942, WJC’s Geneva representative, Dr. Gerhart Riegner, sent a telegram through US diplomatic channels to WJC President Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in New York, and to Member of Parliament Sidney Silverman, chairman of the WJC British Section, in London in which Riegner provided the first documented information of the Nazi plan to annihilate European Jewry:

“Received alarming report that in Führer’s headquarters plan discussed and under consideration [according to which] all Jews in countries occupied or controlled [by] Germany number[ing] 3-1/2 to 4 million should after deportation and concentration in East at one blow [be] extermi-nated to resolve once and for all the Jewish question in Europe.”With that document, the WJC sounded the alarm and sought to marshal forces to come to the

aid of European Jewry, which had been doomed to destruction. Riegner himself continued to try to convey the increasingly chilling news coming to him from German sources in neutral Switzerland.

WJC to the Allies: Bomb the Tracks Leading to Auschwitz in 1944, after a report on mass murders at Auschwitz had reached the West, Dr. Goldmann in the US and his WJC colleagues in Great Britain actively lobbied for Allied governments to bomb the railroad tracks leading to that death camp, but sadly, their efforts were to no avail.

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Working to Rescue Jewsat the same time, the wjc representative in Sweden, Hillel Storch, was involved in several initiatives with lifesaving consequences. He was instrumental in devising a scheme to try to rescue Hungarian Jews with the help of Swedish industrialist Raoul Wallenberg. Storch also played a key role in efforts led by Count Folke Bernadotte to rescue those still alive in the camps. In April 1945, the WJC’s Swedish representative, Norbert Masur, travelled to Berlin, which was under constant bombardment, to meet with SS commander Heinrich Himmler. Masur implored him to release sur-viving concentration camp inmates. As a result, some 7,000 emaciated women in Ravensbrück, Jews and non-Jews, were transported to safety in neutral Sweden.

War Emergency Conferencein november 1944, before the fighting had ended, the WJC convened a War Emergency Con-ference in Atlantic City, NJ, attended by no fewer than 269 delegates representing 40 countries. Rabbi Wise set the tone for the gathering when he declared:

“Even as we desire that the fullest justice be done to every people on earth, we shall be satisfied with nothing less than the fullest measure of justice to the people of Israel.”

At that parley, Dr. Goldmann publicly raised the issue of heirless Jewish property that had be-longed to the murdered Jews of Europe. He maintained that it should be turned over to Jewish com-munities for the purpose of Jewish rehabilitation:

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“It would be adding mockery to tragedy were non-Jewish individuals, non-Jewish communities and governments to become the heirs to this property, which, if not legally, certainly morally be-longs to the Jewish community and must be used for rebuilding Jewish life and a Jewish future.”

The WJC pioneered efforts to seek restitution from Germany and Austria for Jewish material losses and suffering. In that context, WJC helped found the Claims Conference.

After WWII: The DP Campsafter the end of world war ii, many Jewish survivors from Eastern Europe refused to return to their countries of origin, which were rife with anti-Semitic violence. Some 250,000 were housed in Displaced Persons camps throughout Allied-occupied Germany, Austria and Italy. For more than five years, the WJC was the DPs’ principal political ally, advocating on their behalf until they were eventu-ally permitted to leave for Israel and other destinations.

The Nuremberg Trialthe wjc also played a critical role in the post-war pursuit of justice for the murdered Jews of Europe. As early as June of 1945, the WJC’s Jacob Robinson urged that the annihilation of European Jewry be highlighted in the forthcoming Nuremberg Trial rather than being subsumed among other wartime atrocities. “The Jewish people is the greatest sufferer of this war,” Robinson told American pros-ecutor Justice Robert H. Jackson, “if not in absolute number of its casualties … [then] certainly in relative numbers. It therefore has a case of its own against the master Nazi criminals and their accomplices.”

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Speaking the Truthin the mid-1980s, it was the world jewish congress that exposed the fact that Austrian Pres-ident Kurt Waldheim, a former two-term United Nations secretary-general, had lied about his wartime past as a Wehrmacht officer in Yugoslavia. The WJC successfully challenged Waldheim’s assertions by producing documents, eyewitnesses, photographs, medals and commendations given to him, and by proving that his signature was found on documents linked to massacres and deportations. Although Waldheim remained unrepentant until his death in 2007, in the wake of the affair Austria began to address its Nazi past and made significant progress on issues such as restitution.

Seeking Justice for Shoah Victimsfor the wjc, restitution and compensation are primarily about justice, morality and human dignity. The WJC is committed to preserving the memory of those who perished in the Shoah and strives to ensure that those who survived its unimaginable anguish, and the heirs of those who did not, have returned to them what is rightfully theirs.

During the 1990s, the WJC successfully lobbied for the restitution of assets of Holocaust victims held in so-called “dormant” accounts in Swiss banks. It compelled a number of European govern-ments and societies to confront their own wartime histories and to restore unrestituted Jewish assets or pay adequate compensation for them. As a result of this struggle, many Jewish communities, espe-cially in post-Communist Europe, were reconstituted and Jewish life was reborn.

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The WJC also fought for justice for forced laborers—both Jewish and non-Jewish—whose agonizing hardship had gone uncompensated for decades. This resulted in the creation of a US $5 billion fund by Germany in 2001.

The WJC continues to negotiate with those countries that have yet to address the issue of Holocaust-era property restitution.

Looted Artover the past months, wjc president ronald s. lauder and the WJC have been successful in moving Germany to address the issue of looted art. Following a major speech by Ambassador Lauder in Berlin, the German authorities pledged to set up a Lost Cultural Goods Foundation to intensify research on the issue.

The WJC is currently in talks with Germany to ensure that both public and private museums and art galleries respect the 1998 Washington Principles on this issue and to introduce legislation to allow for the return of looted works of art.

Preserving Memorythe wjc has consistently combatted attempts to “appropriate” the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. To that end, beginning in the 1960s, it fought to ensure that the Jewish identity of the great majority of Auschwitz victims be recognized and commemorated. It also vigorously fought all attempts to establish Christian religious institutions or to place Christian symbols within the camp grounds.

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Apart from its contribution on January 27, 2015 to the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the WJC will actively participate in additional commemorative cer-emonies, including in Bergen-Belsen on April 26, 2015, marking the 70th anniversary of the libera-tion of that camp.

Combating Holocaust Denial and the Rise of Neo-Nazismthe abhorrent denial or trivialization of the Holocaust and the glorification of the Nazi era is becoming increasingly fashionable, denigrating the memory of those who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis. The WJC has actively struggled to ensure that legislation be enacted to outlaw Holocaust denial and other forms of anti-Semitism.

In March 2013, WJC leaders travelled to Thessaloniki, Greece, to urge the Greek government to take swift and decisive action against the growing neo-Nazi movement, Golden Dawn, which WJC President Ronald S. Lauder called “the new Nazis” and “a serious danger to liberal democracy.” Subse-quently, Golden Dawn was deemed a criminal organization and its leaders are currently under arrest.

In May 2013, WJC held its plenary assembly in Budapest, Hungary, to focus world attention on the alarming rise of the anti-Semitic Jobbik party. “Both in words and actions these fanatics behave like the Nazis did 80 years ago,” declared Ambassador Lauder.

A Crucial Anniversaryauschwitz is not only the world’s biggest jewish graveyard, it is also the primary symbol of the Holocaust—the largest organized mass murder in human history. The 70th anniversary of its liberation may well be the last major commemoration to be marked by a significant number of survi-vors. The World Jewish Congress is honored to join with them on this momentous occasion and to carry forward its work to ensure that the unspeakable suffering that they and many others endured will never be forgotten.

worldjewishcongress.org

Ronald S. Lauder President

Robert Singer CeO & exeCutive viCe President