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Sixty-five years ago, Soviet troops liberated the concentration camp at Auschwitz. 7,500 prisoners survived, but over one million people had already been murdered. How do we today remember the Holocaust? A conversation with the Argentinean genocide researcher Daniel Eduardo Feierstein.

Mr. Feierstein, you occupy yourself with the culture of remembrance – in Germany, but also in your homeland of Argentina. What are your methods?

Feierstein: I study how we deal with our past, for example, how we in Argentina remember the military dictatorship. I often observe criminal proceedings: they influence our memories and create a mutual identity.

How do we today remember crimes such as the Holocaust? Most of the survivors are already dead.

This is truly a problem. The ensuing generations, however, must continue to ask what their ancestors did, thought and felt. We are at risk of judging National Socialism, of arguing about the guilt of the Germans in general, while entirely suppressing the role that our own family played. This politically correct discourse is far too banal.

How can genocide happen – is there some sort of logic behind the mass murders?

All genocide is based on the following principle: First the section of the population that is targeted for murder is alleged to have its own identity. For instance, the Nazis imposed an alleged ethnic identity on the German Jews and differentiated the Jews from the Germans. The aim was to make the people define themselves by the group they belonged to. Whereby, of course, the identity of the German Jews was complex and could have fit just as well to German non-Jews.

At what point do we call it genocide?

When a section of the total population has been annihilated. This is where genocide is also entirely different from war. In war, two opponents fight one another – society plays no role in it.

In Argentina the terminology was also a major topic.

From 1976 until 1983 the dictators abducted and murdered over 30,000 people. Recently there has been a great deal of debate on whether we can classify the crimes of the military as “genocide.” In the end, we decided that we can.

Why is what we call it so important? A crime is a crime.

The term that is used to speak about the past is like a stamp you put on it. That is why a word influences the way we perceive the history of our country. The term “genocide” links the entire society with the consequences of mass murder; the entire nation is affected. When a segment of your people is lost, then you lose a part of yourself, of your own identity.

What role do the surviving victims play in our culture of remembrance?

In the Third Reich many people thought of the concentration camp prisoners: they can’t be innocent or they wouldn’t have been arrested. Later, then, attempts were made to ignore them – because to listen to them is harder than to deal with the topic of National Socialism in general. By the way, it was just the same in Argentina. Today, many people are mistrustful and ask: How did they manage to survive? The “proper” victims, the thought goes, must all be dead. By challenging their innocence, we make the survivors victims yet again; it is really awful.

Who in Argentina is driving the process of coming to terms with the past?

Primarily, the simple people. Even during the dictatorship, every Thursday mothers and grandmothers gathered on the Plaza de Mayo and demanded that their disappeared sons be returned – right in front of the presidential palace. In the 1980s, near the end of the military dictatorship, protesters pelted the houses of the wrongdoers with tomatoes and eggs. At demonstrations against the regime, the people chanted in chorus: “You will be like the Nazis; no matter where you go, we will find you.” This rallying cry spread through society like wildfire, 40 years after the end of Nazi rule, 40 years after the liberation of Auschwitz.

The interview was held by Julia Amberger.