Often, we treat the living survivors of the Holocaust as memorials: we pay our respects, we ask them to speak to us. When they die, so too do their memories and then only recorded history remains. It might seem that events cease to exist except in physical monuments, museums and books, but they do persist in other ways. Trauma is inherited and values are shaped; forced migration, violence and persecution live on in families for generations.
My grandfather grew up in south-east Germany. In 1939, aged 13, he was placed on the Kindertransport and found himself in London, where he was befriended by a Jewish charity. He never saw his parents again. Records indicate that they were taken to Auschwitz, but as with millions of victims of the Holocaust we can only guess at the horror of how they died.
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